


Metamorphosis

by ryttu3k



Category: Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alien Invasion, Body Horror, Crisis of Faith, Crossover, Cybernetics, Cyborgs, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Contact, Gen, Leadership, Magic and Science, Physical Disability, Rehabilitation, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:16:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryttu3k/pseuds/ryttu3k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an enemy that Princess Zelda cannot possibly fight begins to lay waste to Hyrule, it takes help from the stars themselves to bring them to peace. With Link irreparably changed, what, exactly, does the future hold for them? And how can their saviours help them explore this brand new world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Teaser

The world was crashing down around Zelda.

The sky was alight with fire and lightning, a storm whipped up by the potent malevolence that surrounded Ganondorf like a shroud. Beyond a wall of flame, Link was fighting, fighting for his life and for Zelda's freedom and for the safety of Hyrule, and she could do nothing - nothing! - to help him.

A flash of lightning, and a huge shape loomed before her - Ganondorf, or the monster that Ganondorf had become, had loomed close. Driven by desperation, Link struck - and in that moment of hesitation, the wall of fire fell.

"Link!" Her voice was a hoarse call, whisked away by the wind. "The Master Sword - it's here!"

His bangs were flattened to his forehead by the rain and by blood, she noticed numbly as he sprinted towards her, snatching the sacred sword from the ground. The smile he gave her was fleeting, grim, and she could do little more than take a shaky step forward before flames rose up around her again.

The lightning lit up the sky again. And this time, so did something else.

It had to have been a form of magic. A beam of light, bright gold and tightly focused, struck the ground near where the beast stood, dust and rock flying upwards. Zelda let out an involuntary scream as shards of stone flew through the flame barrier, striking her arms and face and leaving long red scratches there. The beast let out a yell - one of those beams had come close, and blisters were rising on what passed for the skin of its arm.

"Link!" Zelda called again desperately, her movements quick but clumsy as she tried to avoid more of the shrapnel. "Did you do that?"

He called back a negative, diving out of the way himself as another of those beams came lancing down. And then another bolt of lightning struck close, enough to light up the battlefield like day, sending rock tumbling, and through the smoke and dust she could see quite suddenly that they were not alone.

The rock that had threatened her now hid her, Zelda throwing her arms up to shield her head as a pillar crumbled down. It had barely hit her, wedged against another fragment of what was once the abomination of a castle, but the glancing blow had dazed her just long enough to miss the approaching army.

For what else could it be but an army? There was a multitude of them, identical men in identical armour, moving in lockstep with each other. Raising their hands, a hail of golden beams lit up the night, each one aimed precisely at the beast that was once Ganondorf. From her hiding place, Zelda could smell the rancid odour of burnt flesh, and she gagged.

Link, too, seemed to be stunned - he had taken several steps back, moving further from the battlefield. What could he do, here? The strange army seemed determined to take down the beast themselves, and Link had suddenly found himself unnecessary. Instead, he was studying their surroundings, gaze darting around, the fairy that accompanied him high above his head to illuminate their surroundings a little better.

Was he searching for her? Zelda struggled to move, succeeding in freeing an arm.

But her movement had gone unnoticed - for, quite suddenly, flames had burst out across the beast's skin. The scream of pain, even coming from the man she hated, was terrible - pure agony, pure rage as he burnt. Perversely, the smell of roasting meat wafted across the battlefield, and again, she nearly gagged.

But then the flames rose higher, and when they finally flickered from view, succumbing to the rain, Ganondorf was gone.

There was scarcely room to react, and Zelda had found herself too frozen in shock to do so. Their saviours had stopped Ganondorf? It had truly been that easy? She didn't know what magic they had used, but perhaps, perhaps she could learn it from them -

Until they turned on Link, two metal-clad hands grasping his upper arms, the Master Sword falling from his suddenly numbed grip.

His cry was cut off by a third hand slapped across his mouth, and Zelda clapped her own across her mouth in sudden shock. They had turned on Link? Hadn't they understood what he was trying to do?

A handful of them, rather suddenly, disappeared - their images had flickered and vanished, leaving a handful behind. Whirling blades had appeared at their fingers, and Link disappeared behind a wall of them. The sound of a sudden cry of agony, cut off abruptly, was enough to spur her into action - whoever they were, whatever they had done by stopping Ganondorf, they were hurting Link, they were _hurting him_...

Stone and rubble shifted as the battered princess wriggled her way out of her rocky shelter, and two half-turned in her direction, enough for her to catch sight of bloodied flesh and metal between them. "Stop!" she called desperately, the sound barely audible over the thunder and rain and sound of whirring, "Please...!"

One did stop, rising to its full height, and Zelda froze as it faced her fully. No man clad in armour was this - every square inch of its body was metal, from its blade-like hands to its dispassionate face, a pair of gleaming, glowing red eyes staring out at her with so little emotion she may had well been facing a statue.

It took a step towards her, and Zelda took one backwards. And then she turned to run, dragging up her skirts, racing for one of the temporary bridges that crossed the pit that Ganondorf's castle had been suspended over, her heart racing, pulse thudding in her ears so loudly she could barely hear the thunder.

And then the world turned blue and white, her feet no longer stumbling over rock but held aloft, turned insubstantial and ghostly and the lightning the last thing she saw as everything around her turned white...


	2. Act One

The chaos of the battlefield had not ended here.

No longer outside in the rain, Zelda found herself in a room of metal, shrinking against one wall as people - actual flesh and blood people, not the metal men from the ruins of the castle - shoved past her. A distant explosion sounded - the ground rocked, boxes and barrels hitting the ground with solid-sounding thumps.

"-set to stun, we don't know what -"

No - her initial assessment had been wrong. The metal men were still here and present, and more gold and green and red beams lit up the air as they fired at each other. Here and there, a beam would catch one of the boxes or barrels, and on occasion, it would explode, sending acrid smells through the room.

But the metal men were beginning to fall.

"-field up, now!"

A transparent wall, flickering yellow for a moment, shot up between the metal men and those amongst the living, a few clutching burns and wounds. The metal men stilled, perhaps confounded by the wall - Zelda, for just a moment, could sympathise.

Something was wrong, she realised a moment later - one of the metal men had fallen, limbs twitching and convulsing. And Zelda realised as she stared that this was not merely a metal man - there was a flash of a bare arm, a tangle of blonde hair.

Link? Her heart in her throat, she stepped forward.

"Get that one to sickbay!" one of the living people ordered, and the wall buckled and wavered just enough to allow them to grab the twitching metal creature.

The glimpse of blonde hair - had it been Link?

They were going to sickbay, she decided as a few of the uniformed people hurried by, and so was she.

Sickbay, it seemed, was accessed via a tiny room, the doors sliding open as the small group approached. "Sickbay!" one snapped, and the doors slid shut before Zelda's eyes. She bit her lip in frustration, reaching forward to touch the door - metal, held shut firmly. Closing her eyes, she concentrated -

And the doors opened again with a ping, revealing a small, empty chamber.

"Sickbay!" she ordered with a wavering voice, a sudden sensation of falling making her clamp her mouth shut for fear of losing whatever - well, whatever Sheik had last eaten. But the doors were sliding open before she could even consider being ill, and a set of doors awaited her, shouts calling for her attention.

Within the room was chaos, and uniformed people dashing from platform to platform, four of them bearing twitching sets of limbs in metal and skin and blood -

And, attended to by a young man with short, curly blonde hair, clad in simple red and black, was Link.

Darting forward with a short cry, she found herself cut off abruptly - a woman had grabbed her, tall and thin, clothes fitting to her body like a second skin. A Sheikah? Zelda only nodded helplessly as the woman ordered her not to interfere, her voice icy.

He was grievously hurt, she could see that much. What skin she could see was streaked with blood, painful-looking gouges crossing his chest and stomach. And there, wrapped around his torso like a perverse garment...

Metal. Metal, like the metal men.

Zelda was barely aware of hitting the wall furthest from the bed where he was being attended to, her eyes wide open but barely seeing as she sank down against it.

There had been four people lying in four beds. If Link had been hurt, so too had three others. Hadn't she seen smoke in the air? What if it had come from Kakariko Village, or from the ranch? Gaze flicking between them, she noticed a blonde head of hair that wasn't Link's, soft curves tainted with streaks of blood and metal. And there was another woman, her face turned away, but long white curls damp and tangled and knotted. The man, there - was the red his natural hair, or was it blood amongst the the grey?

How many people were like this?

How many of her people had she failed?

"- the isotropic restraint, this is a delicate -"

"- blood pressure is falling, we need -"

"- the _lectrazine_ , not the metrazene -"

The shouts and calls in the room were fading, disappearing into snatches of sound, words that meant utterly nothing to her. This was a language she could not speak - there was no way she could help. There was no way she could help Link.

"- a doctor, not a mechanic, we -"

"- need a hypospray, this one's going into -"

"- getting renal failure over here -"

The lump in her chest burst out suddenly, an almost painful sob erupting as she drew her legs close, burying her face in her arms. Link was hurt and so were others, and there were more of the metal men upstairs, and although she could no longer hear explosions or feel the room rock beneath her feet, there was shouting and noise and chaos and it had suddenly occurred to her that she really had no idea where she was...

"Are you hurt?"

That voice had come from somewhere distinctly closer. Zelda blinked, raising her tear-streaked face to find that she was being addressed.

It was a woman peering down at her, short bobbed hair framing a concerned face. For just a moment, Zelda was speechless.

"I -" she started, and her voice faltered as her gaze fell upon Link again. "No, I - they're just scrapes." But they were stinging, she realised, her bruises and aches brought to her full attention. "I'll be fine."

The woman made a thoughtful sound, picking up something from a tray. "I assume you came from the planet?" she questioned as she ran the thing across the gap between Zelda's armour and glove, where a rock had left a shallow cut. Zelda jerked a little - the cut had vanished.

"The planet?" she repeated. "No, I was at the cas- where the castle was -"

"First contact." It was a quiet little murmur, words that she knew but not put together like that, and bewilderment crossed Zelda's face. "Hmm. I think I better explain."

And then the woman's hand was taking hers and she was being pulled to her feet, being guided out the door, leaving the sickbay, the wounded, and Link behind.

 

"Tea, hot and sweet."

It had been a very long day. After the dizzying elevator ride, the huge room with enormous windows and more desks than she could identify, and now this simpler, more comfortable space, after the uniform-clad people buzzing around, a multitude of skin colours, facial features, and body shapes, Zelda could no longer find it in herself to be surprised when a cup of tea simply materialised from the alcove in the wall. The woman handed it to her before returning to the alcove and this time requesting coffee, black. "Thank you," she murmured, taking a sip. The sweetness, at least, was helping to ground her just a little.

"You looked like you needed it," the woman pointed out, taking a sip of her own drink and closing her eyes in obvious enjoyment. "Perhaps we should start at the beginning. What's your name?"

"Zelda," she murmured, almost half-heartedly. Distantly, she could hear Impa reprimanding her - where were her manners? - and she sat up more fully, setting the tea down. "My name is Princess Zelda of Hyrule," she clarified, hand twitching in her lap as she fought the urge to check that her tiara was still in place. "Well... I suppose I will be Queen Zelda soon."

The woman made a thoughtful sound. "Royalty, huh," she mused, giving her a brief smile. "Well, I can't quite say I'm that high up. I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway. Welcome to the USS Voyager."

"Military? Are you a Gerudo?"

"Starfleet. And I'm human, from a planet called Earth."

More unfamiliarity. Zelda let out a little sigh, glancing across at the window and the stars she could see beyond it. "I don't think I've ever heard of it before. Is..." Cautiously, she set forth a hypothesis. "Is it called Starfleet because we're high up, amongst the stars?"

Janeway raised an eyebrow and stood, offering a hand to Zelda to help her up. "You could say we're high up," she confirmed, gesturing to the windows with her free hand. "Go have a look."

A tower on a mountaintop, she decided as she moved across the floor. At first, all she could see were stars.

And then she knelt on the cushions of the long bench against the wall, looked down, and gasped.

Shimmering in blue and green and white, an immense orb laid beneath them, so vast she could not even see the entire thing at once. And beyond that, all around, was inky black punctuated only by the stars and the sun, burning in the sky at the same time.

Nothing stood between the vast craft she now knelt in and the blue and green orb below.

"It's your world from orbit." The captain's voice was soft, almost gentle. "There, between that mountain range and the desert - that's where you're from."

And she could see it now, too - the white-capped Snowpeaks north of their borders and Death Mountain and its parent range stretching perpendicular. And there was the desert, far more vast than anyone in Hyrule could have imagined - and there, a tiny, insignificant patch of green, was what had to be the plains that made up Hyrule Field.

"It's so small," she whispered.

Janeway nodded once. "The first time I saw my home from orbit, I thought the same thing. But small places are worth defending as well."

Zelda's shoulders slumped. All too easily, she could still smell burning flesh. "I couldn't defend it." Her voice was soft as she turned away, wanting nothing more than to curl into a ball like a child and wait for it to go away.

Settling down beside her, Janeway set the tea she had brought with her down on the small table. "It was an enemy that has technology far beyond yours. By all rights, our intervention has violated the Prime Directive - but the Rycians did that well enough on their own. The cyborg soldiers that attacked you," she clarified at the perplexity that Zelda was sure had shown on her face.

"What _were_ they?" Zelda frowned. "They stopped Ganondorf, but they hurt Link -" Her voice caught, just for a moment - "And the others in sickbay. Are they friends or enemies?"

"Enemies, I'd say." Janeway grimaced. "They're copycats of - well, the Borg are pretty complicated, but they assimilate people into a collective hive mind. The Rycians just convert captives into cyborgs and use them as soldiers - they don't bother with assimilation."

Zelda's frown deepened. "Then - the ones that I saw earlier. They were prisoners?"

The captain shook her head. "We've never got close enough to tell. Every time we've seen them, they've got away - this is the first time they've left something behind. We'll be able to run tests now, work out what happens to their converts." There was something almost grimly pleased about her expression, and Zelda felt her hands ball into fists.

"Some of them are my people!" she told her insistently, "Not - something to experiment on! The ones I saw in that room -" Her voice cracked again. "If the ones in sickbay are only partially converted - then some of them _must_ be from Hyrule, I have to save them..."

Setting a placating hand on Zelda's, Janeway nodded grimly. "We'll do everything we can. But I've never heard of a Rycian that's come back from complete conversion - your people in sickbay have more of a chance, but this is still new technology to us."

"New technology," Zelda repeated, then let out a mildly hysterical little laugh. "The height of Hyrule's technology are gas lamps! This is - the walls themselves light up and you can make tea out of thin air and we're in the sky amongst the stars - how could we possibly compare?"

The hand that was once resting on Zelda's own rose to her shoulder, resting lightly on the armour there. "We all need to start somewhere. Consider this your first contact - I just wish it could have been under better circumstances."

Zelda let out a sigh, turning back to the planet below. "Where is Earth?" she asked suddenly, gazing at foreign lands. What place could have produced Voyager? It must have been far, far away.

"Somewhere in that direction," Janeway murmured, gesturing out the window into the starry sky. "A very long way away - we found ourselves in the Delta Quadrant by accident. We've been trying to get home for seven years, and it'll probably take us several more decades."

"Seven ye-" Her eyes wide, Zelda glanced between the captain and the stars. "You're from the stars themselves?"

Seven years was a very long time. Zelda could recognise the homesickness on Janeway's face all too easily. "Just one of them. Each star out there - it's a sun like your own, and nearly all have planets. Earth is just one planet around our own sun."

Then their saviours had come from a different world entirely. Beyond Hyrule, beyond their entire world, there was a multitude of other worlds, each potentially filled with new friends and allies - or new enemies, like the Rycians.

Zelda's world, quite suddenly, had become rather bigger.

Perhaps Janeway could guess that Zelda would need a moment to process this, because she stood, moving to the opposite side of the room. There was quiet conversation going on between Janeway and some disembodied voice, more words that Zelda couldn't understand - things about re-integration and cortical nodes and replication, a jargon she was utterly unfamiliar with.

Link and the others, as best she could determine, were stable - for now. But they were not yet out of the woods.

Turning back to the window, Zelda pillowed her head on one arm and let out a shaky sigh. Enemies from the stars... how could they even hope to defend themselves against them? They had taken down even the beast that Ganondorf had become in seconds. Even Voyager had managed to whisk them away into the sky - she held no doubt that if they wished it, they could kill them without a second thought.

Suddenly, she felt very small.

"I've heard from the Doctor." Janeway had returned by now, taking a sip of her coffee. "He said that the patients are stable, but it's only temporary."

Zelda nodded, staring at her gloved hands. Her dress was filthy... "What's wrong with them?"

Taking a seat beside her, the captain turned to face her, her expression serious. "It looks like most of the cyborgs have an array that ties their biological functions in with their cybernetic ones - ah, the bits made of flesh and the bits made of metal," she clarified. "The ones that have been fully converted have them, but the four in sickbay don't - and it means that their bodies are going to reject their cybernetic parts." She frowned to herself. "It sounds almost like a cortical node, but less sophisticated."

"They're missing a part?" The captain nodded. "Is there a way to - to get one, or make one?"

"Well, that's another problem," Janeway said grimly. "We could harvest them from some of the fully converted cyborgs - but installing one would also complete _their_ programming, and it looks like their individual consciousness wouldn't survive it. Their bodies would be alive, but..."

"But it would be at the expense of their souls," Zelda finished, a curious expression crossing Janeway's face for a moment. "What other options are there?"

Taking another sip of her coffee, the captain shook her head. "That's what they're exploring. One of the soldiers was killed in the clash - they're looking at its connections to try and work out a version of our own."

"How are they -" Cutting herself off as a sudden mental image on how that could happen arose, Zelda shook her head, her stomach tightening at the graphic mental images that arose. "Never mind."

Finishing her coffee and setting the cup down with a soft thump, Janeway stretched a little. "It may take some time," she told Zelda kindly, "In the mean time, how about I show you to your quarters? We have some rooms reserved for visitors. Or you could learn more about the ship - I recommend the mess hall."

How long was she going to be here? Zelda hesitated, glancing down at Hyrule. "I - when can I go home?" she asked, voice suddenly small, hesitant even as she asked. What, exactly, would there be to go home to?

"Whenever you want," Janeway said after a brief moment of hesitation, "But I would wait until your people have begun to recover."

"Of course." Zelda almost tripped over her words in her haste to say them, but she was relieved as well - she had had half a suspicion that they would hold them hostage here. "Ah - may I ask how we got here in the first place? It was like using a warp song..."

Oh, that certainly got a curious look. "You'll have to tell me what that is on the way. Here, I'll show you the transporter rooms..."

 

Voyager was truly bewildering, and Zelda was almost disoriented by the time they made it back to her new quarters on deck three. The enormous room full of equipment they had passed through, she had learned, was called the Bridge and was generally out of bounds for all but the most important officers, and the very lowest decks, which she had not been shown, were full of technical equipment she wouldn't want to even go near for fear of accidentally blowing something up.

But the rest... the mess hall on deck two, her quarters on deck three, sickbay on deck five, and something on deck six called a holodeck that Janeway promised to show her at some point, they would all be places she would have to accustom herself to.

The quarters she had been given were small but comfortable, and once Janeway had instructed her how to use the replicator to get a good meal, the sonic shower to wash, and how to open and answer the door, Zelda was more than happy to get comfortable again. As disconcerting as the shower had been, it was a revelation to be clean once more (and once she had dressed again, she had taken the time to go through it again, this time to wash the mud and dust and grime off her gown). Leaving the armour off this time, she replicated herself a cup of tea and some bread and cheese, and, after a moment of consideration, a small cake.

It had been a very long time since she had tasted cake.

Indeed, it had been a very long time since she had tasted much of anything. Sheik had kept them both well-nourished, but half-stale bread, hard cheese, fish, and whatever plants could be foraged for did not make for a varied diet, and the touch of sugar against her tongue bordered on overwhelming. What would he say if he could see her in a place like this, her plate sticky with icing?

What could he say if he could see her at all? Even cake wasn't enough for her mood to suddenly plummet at the thought. He had been her protector for seven years - and although he had said his goodbyes before they had met Link at the Temple of Time, she knew that neither of them would have let go had they known what was ahead. He had cared for Link deeply, and now he was gone while Link fought for his life...

Suddenly, Zelda felt very alone. The fork dropped from her hand, hitting the table with a clatter, as she drew herself up into the ball she had wanted to hide herself in earlier. Sheik was gone, Link could still well follow suit. Impa, the woman who had been a mother to her more than anyone else, had become a Sage, and her father...

Her family was gone. Her land, her birthright and responsibility, was in tatters. And she was the only one that could put it right, a princess in hiding who had watched her people suffer for seven years.

The door buzzed suddenly, and Zelda wiped her eyes with the back of one ungloved hand. "Come in," she called out, fighting to keep her voice steady.

It was Janeway, and Zelda stood as the captain entered. "I've got word from the Doctor," she said without preamble, "They've worked out how to integrate the cybernetics. Would you like to be there when he wakes - ah, was it Link?"

Link was alright? She was already heading to the door. "Is he... alright?" she questioned as Janeway led her to what she now knew as a turbolift.

Janeway was silent for a moment, speaking only to direct the turbolift. "Physically, he'll live," she said quietly as she led Zelda towards sickbay, "Psychologically... well, his body is very different now."

Different... Zelda barely dared to breathe as they entered, noting the half-tubes over the inhabitants of the beds. The Doctor, a balding man in teal and black, looked rather grim as he led them to one of the beds. "I should warn you, he probably won't be able to control his new limbs," he told them as he reached for something small and handheld. "You may want to stand on his _other_ side."

New limbs? Peering around the captain, Zelda steeled herself, then turned to face Link. For a moment, she couldn't breathe - the side of his face closest to her was serene, calm. But on the other, metal protruded, a large piece covering his right eye, something glassy and mechanical-looking replacing what was once clear blue. The ear on that side was utterly gone, metal wrapping around his skull, his hair on that side ragged. Beneath the sheet, more metal wrapped around his throat, his chest, his shoulder, the silhouette of his arm beneath the fabric sharp and narrower than the bare left arm that laid above the sheets.

Janeway had said that his body was very different now. And if Zelda could barely draw breath looking at the damage, how would Link feel, knowing that this had happened to him? She may as well have done this to him.

And so she slipped her hand into his good one, squeezing gently. "Okay," she said softly, and the Doctor carefully pressed a small metal instrument against his neck.

His eyelashes fluttered, head lolling to one side. A soft, disoriented-sounding murmur escaped his lips. And slowly, one unfocused eye opened, gazing up at the ceiling in sheer perplexity.

"Link?" Zelda murmured, and his head turned with effort. "I know this is going to seem frightening, but you're safe now." And if only she could convince her voice to be steady enough to portray that. "You're amongst friends - these people helped us both. You were hurt, but we're going to help you get better. How do you feel?"

"Ze-Zelda..." Link's voice was scratchy, small and pained, and he shook his head. "Princess. I -" He screwed up his face. "I feel cold. A-and heavy. And..." Beneath the sheet, at the proximity of his feet, something moved - just one limb. "I can't move one of my arms and legs. Wh-what... happened?"

Almost helplessly, Zelda glanced across to Janeway for support, who simply gave her a reassuring nod. It wasn't much help at all, really, and the princess had to consider for a moment. How could she break the news gently?

"What do you remember?" she asked instead, gaze fixed on the clean, clear skin of Link's left shoulder.

He was silent for a moment. "Fighting Ganondorf," he eventually said, shaking his head again. "The - whatever he turned in to. Then there were these lights, and people made of metal, and..." Screwing up his face, his hand tightened around Zelda's. "They grabbed me, and - I guess they knocked me out - what happened?"

So he did remember being attacked. If he hadn't, if he had no association with fearsome cold metal and his new appearance, this could be so much easier. "Our new friends stopped them," she murmured, "And brought us here. They've been very kind."

Link nodded, exhaustion written over what remained of his face. Slipping his hand out of Zelda's, he reached up to scrub at his eyes -

And before Zelda could stop him, his fingertips brushed up against the edge of the metal plate fixed over his right eye.

There was pain there now, fear and nervous anticipation. "Zelda?" he whispered once, half a blue-eyed gaze fixed on her as he explored the metal fixed to his face, prodding at the glass where his eye had once been, navigating the strip of metal down his throat, pressed against the curved plate that wrapped around his shoulder.

And then he tore his gaze from hers and pushed the sheet down, revealing a thin metallic arm and pieces and plates hammered into his torso almost haphazardly, the joints a thin black material, indicators gleaming darkly on his chest and stomach. The Doctor, by now, had gathered more equipment, catching the edge of the sheet and pulling it back up.

"Calm down," he ordered. "You _don't_ want to know what shock like this will do to what remains of your internal organs."

But Link had already let fear strike him, his breathing quick and shaken, his good hand curling in and out of a fist, struggling to sit up. Nearby, a monitor began beeping alarmingly. "What happened to me?" he ordered, and there was a hysterical edge that Zelda never wanted to hear again in his voice. "Tell me! What's wrong with my arm?!"

And then the tall woman that had pushed Zelda out of the way earlier was there, pressing Link back down against the bed, her expression icy. "You are working yourself into a panic," she said flatly, and with a glance at the Doctor, pressed one of the same small instruments against Link's throat.

Almost immediately, he ceased struggling, slumping down against the bed again, quite unconscious. "I suppose that could have gone better," Janeway said quietly, and Zelda dropped her head against the bed, reached for Link's limp hand, and began to weep.


	3. Act Two

Zelda couldn't sleep.

After the disaster in sickbay, the captain had sent her off to rest with the promise of trying again in the morning (or whatever passed for morning on the ship, at least - she had utterly no idea of what time it was in Hyrule, and was correspondingly disoriented). She had found a simple sleeveless nightgown and robe already replicated for her, had washed her face, changed, slipped beneath covers more comfortable than anything she had laid in for the past seven years...

And had proceeded to spend the next four hours awake.

It wasn't that she was a stranger to insomnia - she and Sheik had shared many sleepless nights, or nights when he slept and she remained awake, going over her thoughts in complete darkness. But it seemed all very far away now, worries of the future far off.

This, now, was reality - the attack, the ship, the soldiers in the cargo bay, the four partial cyborgs in sickbay. In the seven years she had waited, ruling Hyrule was still an abstract concept, something she knew intellectually that she'd have to do in the future, but with more pressing concerns ahead.

Now, though... now, it stared at her in the eye and demanded to be heard. There would be no more putting it off - she was the only one left of the Royal Family, the only one who could lead Hyrule out of the darkness. She had to find a way to help her people, both those in the land below and those in the ship, to be a leader and set aside her abandonment of them for seven long years.

But the last time she had been in the castle, she had been nine years old and had been convinced she knew everything, and her sixteen-year-old self had long since grown up enough to know that she was still very, very young.

She had to work out a plan.

The first step was for Link and the other three in sickbay to recover, whatever recovery would entail. The next step was to work out what to do with the fully-converted soldiers. Then, there would be the matter of returning to Hyrule. After that, she would have to reassure the residents of Hyrule - Hylian, Goron, Zora, and Gerudo alike - that she was fit to rule.

And then she would have to help repair a land shattered by the seven-year war and the sudden, brutal attack that Voyager had saved them from, an attack that she was beginning to realise was not necessarily an isolated event. There were so many stars in the sky - if just a fraction of them held people who had the desire and ability to hurt them, they would find themselves in the same situation. And Voyager still had their own home to find - they could not protect them forever.

No, another step on the list had to be a way to learn to defend themselves.

Sleep seemed to be somewhat elusive, too many thoughts buzzing around in her head. And so she rose from the bed, pulling her robe on and padding barefoot out the door.

She was at the door of sickbay before she realised that her feet had carried her there. Swallowing roughly, Zelda entered, moving falteringly to Link's bed.

"I wouldn't try that again," the Doctor said from where he was checking on one of the others, "Next time we wake them up, it should probably be with restraints."

Throat too tight to speak, Zelda simply nodded, taking Link's hand again.

This was ridiculous. She barely knew Link - she had met him only once as a child, and had had only thoughts and memories and imagination over the next seven years. Within Sheik, she could only observe. And during the final battle, they hadn't exactly had time to swap pleasantries...

But she still thought of him as a friend, this brave boy that had fought and suffered because of her.

Perhaps she shouldn't have. Perhaps he would see her only as the cause of his pain, and when he awoke, he'd request that she'd leave him be and never return. And he would be right to do so - because of her, he had lost his innocence, his childhood, his sense of identity, and now, lying here in the biobed, his own bodily autonomy.

He had every right to hate her. And while a part of her prayed that he wouldn't, she knew she'd accept any recrimination he aimed at her.

"Can I help you with anything?" the Doctor called as he finished with the one he was checking, an eyebrow raised. "You _are_ probably going to get in the way."

Rude. Zelda frowned at him, then let out a sigh, her hair hanging over her face. "I can't sleep," she admitted, "But unless you have something for that, I suppose I should just keep trying..."

He scoffed audibly. "Of course I have something for that! You'll be asleep within ten minutes." In his hand was one of those devices he had used on Link earlier - one to make him wake up, one to send him to sleep. She stared at it curiously.

"What is that?"

"Just a sedative in a hypospray. I assure you, Miss Princess, I know _precisely_ what I'm doing."

She nodded, brushing her hair to one side. "That's alright. If you're a healer, I trust you. The, ah - thing - it's called a hypospray?"

Hearing more than feeling it go off, he made an affirmative sound. "I can give you an encyclopaedia of knowledge of it in the morning. For now, I suggest you head to bed before you drop in the corridor."

Giving him the ghost of a smile, she turned back to Link and reached for his hand again. "Good night," she whispered, and with a parting nod to the Doctor, she turned her back and walked away.

Perhaps, this time, she would find sleep.

 

The next day dawned with no actual dawn at all. Certainly, the sun was visible - but this was daylight of a very different sort, negating the need for artificial lighting even in a black sky.

She had showered, dressed (again, in her tattered dress - she would have to find a way to repair the rips and tears from flying rock), and settled down for some breakfast when the door buzzed. Zelda had started, almost spilling her tea before she remembered exactly what that sound signified. "Come in!"

There. That sounded reasonably steady.

It was the captain, and Zelda offered her a faint, tired smile. "Good morning."

"Morning. I hope you slept well?"

Hesitating for just a moment, she settled for shrugging. "It's hard to sleep in a new place." And this was, technically, the first time she had been out of Hyrule. "I haven't been wanting for anything."

Except peace of mind, and stability, and home.

"Glad to hear it," Janeway grinned, glancing at her dress. "Would you like something else to wear? I'm not quite sure how we'd repair that, but we can give you something else, if you'd like."

There was a rip in the dress right at her thigh. It wasn't particularly seemly for a princess. "That would be lovely, thank you."

Zelda almost sighed in relief when Janeway moved on - the small talk had been excruciating. "I've been talking to the Doctor - he thinks that he might have a way to help the ones in sickbay, but he'd like to run it by you first. After all, you know the world they're from - if the explanation makes sense to _you_ , it'll be easier to give it to _them_ without causing a panic." She grimaced, very faintly. "Your friend may be trickier, but we're hoping that you being there will help."

Letting out her breath slowly, she nodded. "I'll try my best," she vowed, and meant every word.

"Good," Janeway nodded. "After that, I wouldn't mind briefing you on some - ah, interesting readings we found. They might be of interest to you."

Readings? "You have a library here?" she asked curiously.

"A library?" Janeway looked perplexed, then paused. "Oh - no, readings are... recordings. Things we've learned about the planet. We use a computer to scan it."

Computers again. Zelda sighed, thoroughly sick of hearing about those. What she wouldn't give for a book... "Okay," she said, drawing herself up to her full height (never slouch, Impa's voice reminded her, pull your shoulders back, hold your head up high). "If you could show me where I could find a change of clothing, I'm happy to proceed to sickbay."

There was the faintest hint of a smile on Janeway's face, Zelda noted, as she proceeded to do just that.

 

They would be starting with Link.

The memory of the day before all too clear, the Doctor had set something on Link's forehead that he assured would act as a restraint, preventing Link from lashing out and hurting himself. Zelda hated seeing it there, hated what it stood for, even as she took her place at the side of the bed.

For Link, bearer of the Triforce of Courage, to feel that much fear...

Minutely, she nodded to the Doctor. There was a soft hiss as the hypospray touched his neck. And, this time, he opened his one good eye with a suddenness that almost took Zelda aback.

It was fixed at the ceiling before beginning to roam, and Zelda fought back the urge to shiver as his gaze found her - barely, just barely, and she would need only to move a fraction to be out of his field of view.

Instead, she moved closer.

"How do you feel?" she asked again, softly and fearfully, like a child fearing punishment for speaking out at the wrong time.

He let out his breath slowly, gaze slipping away from her. "I can't move at all," he murmured, lips barely parted. "I could move a bit earlier."

Zelda bit her lip. "It's so you don't hurt yourself." Her voice was almost a whisper. "We - the Doctor - he can fix it."

The blue eye closed. "What about..." The sheet rose and fell. "My other arm and leg. What about them?" His words were choked, fearful.

Glancing again at the Doctor, Zelda reached for his hand. Could he at least feel it, even if he couldn't move it? "The healer says that... there are paths in people's bodies, and when your thoughts tell you to move something, the message travels down those paths and makes your body move. And you'll just - have to make those paths again."

From Link's other side, the Doctor nodded. "I'm removing the isotropic restraint," he told Link plainly, and lifted the thing off his head.

Almost immediately, his head turned to one side, fixing Zelda in his gaze. "Princess," he asked, "What happened to me?"

Nayru spare her this conversation, but Link deserved the truth. Her eyes closed briefly. "The Doctor says... they're called the Rycians. They turn people into soldiers by changing their flesh to metal. With you and the others - there's three others - they didn't finish before Voyager saved us - you're _not_ one of their soldiers, I promise you that!"

Janeway stepped in now, giving Link a nod. "I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway, and this is the USS Voyager. You're under my protection now - you have my word that we'll help you recover."

Zelda flashed her a quick, grateful smile. The smile faltered as she turned back to Link, though - he had turned away, his eye closed, biting down on his lip. There was torment there, and pain and fear and disbelief, and she had no idea how she could make it better.

"Link?" she called softly, and he barely turned to acknowledge her. "How can we - what's the best way to help you?"

His breath came out in a shudder. "Just - let me think for a while," he said, voice so soft it was only barely audible. "They did something bad to me. I've gotta think about it."

Her vision blurred, just for a moment. "Okay," she whispered, and started to stand.

The hand around hers tightened. "Stay with me?" His eye was still closed, but his face was clear enough to read, fear and loneliness and an uncertain future ahead. "Please."

"Of course."

He had wanted her to stay. Settling back on her seat, Zelda squeezed his hand as the captain took her leave and the Doctor departed for his other patients. He had wanted her to stay, and he didn't hate her, and maybe, just maybe, they could make it through this.

 

They hadn't been happy.

Zelda was silent as Janeway led her away from sickbay, gaze fixed on the floor as the captain guided her up to her ready room. The events from earlier played in a near-constant loop in her head - the shock that all three (residents of Kakariko, she had learnt - one, Link recognised as the local smith, the older woman had been an artist - how would she do that with two artificial hands? - and the younger had been a fine tailor) had felt when they had awakened to find themselves changed.

All of them would face difficulties when they returned - if they could, in fact, return. It would be a long process, the Doctor had explained, learning to control their new body parts. Physically, they would be aided by the tall and intimidating woman who had pushed Zelda aside and sedated Link earlier, who the Doctor had referred to as Seven, and a boy around Zelda's own age named Icheb. They had, the captain explained, both been a part of the Borg Collective, had experienced been forcibly turned into cyborgs themselves, and had recovered. They would be the ones to teach them how to claim their new bodies as their own.

But they had both been young when that had happened. For someone like the old artist, who had spent sixty-some years with her own body, it would be a long and hard process. And while Seven and Icheb could help with the physical side, who knew about the emotional side?

Zelda was listless as Janeway led her to the seating at the side of the room, pressing a cup of tea into her hands. "What were the readings you wanted to talk to me about?" she asked quietly, speaking more to the cup of tea than anything else.

The captain made a little thoughtful sound, picking up a flat object and peering at it. "It's about the readings we recorded when we arrived at the battle. We've been able to isolate the Rycian ones now, but there was a significant underlying one that we can't identify." And she lifted her head, fixing her gaze on the princess. "We've recorded the same readings coming from you and your friend Link."

The final battle, and from Link and herself... suddenly, Zelda's chest felt particularly tight. Setting down her tea shakily, she moved to cover the back of her right hand with her left, trying to keep the move as subtle as possible.

Janeway noticed, of course.

"What kind of readings?" she asked uncertainly. If they had detected the Triforce... a relic left behind by the Goddesses, something tied in to the Sacred Realm itself - could they even detect such a magic?

Setting the flat thing down, Janeway sat back in her seat. "All sorts. Chroniton particles, tachyon radiation, graviton particles, trianium particles... we even have readings of omega molecules. Now, why would we have readings of those?"

Zelda's first thought was that those names couldn't have possibly been real. Tachyon radiation? Trianium particles? Someone with a lot of spare time on their hands must have made those up, surely. Her befuddlement must have clearly shown on her face, because Janeway paused suddenly, looking a little embarrassed. "I don't suppose those have any meaning to you. But can you think of anything that could be causing..." She considered for a moment. "Strange forms of energy to be coming from you, your friend, and from the battle we picked you up from?"

Roughly, Zelda swallowed. "I might have an idea," she said quietly, and held out her right hand, palm down.

Janeway wasted little time - already, there was a handheld device that she held up to Zelda's hand, running it over the skin. "It's called a tricorder," she murmured as it buzzed and beeped. "It just works as a scanner - it won't hurt you." With another, final-sounding beep, she lifted it again, peering at it. "If I didn't know better, I'd say there was some serious technology in your hand."

Zelda's immediate reaction was to flinch away, covering her hand with an audible slap. "It's not technology!" she almost shouted in protest, her eyes widening suddenly as she realised what she had let slip.

Still - if they had the ability to detect the Triforce, then they would know about Link's, too. And what if it caused him harm in some way, some interaction they couldn't see with his new parts?

In for a green, in for a gold. Drawing in a steadying breath and letting it out slowly, she closed her eyes.

"It's called the Triforce," she explained softly. "It's a sacred relic of our world - before Hyrule was born, before time existed and life existed, three Golden Goddesses descended on the chaos that was Hyrule. Din, the Goddess of Power... Farore, the Goddess of Courage... Nayru, the Goddess of Wisdom."

These were sacred stories, taught to her since before she could talk. Her gaze was fixed on her joined hands, unwilling to see Janeway's reaction.

"Din, with her strong flaming arms, cultivated the land and created the red earth. Nayru poured her wisdom on to the earth and gave the spirit of law to the world. And Farore, with her rich soul, produced all life forms who would uphold the law. And then, the three great goddesses, their labours complete, departed for the heavens, leaving behind three sacred golden triangles at the point where they left the world. This was the Triforce, and is the basis of our world's providence."

She drew in a breath, finally lifting her head as she continued. "The Triforce possesses the ability to grant the dearest wish of whoever lays their hand on it. But its resting place was the Sacred Realm, and it acts as a mirror that reflects what is in the heart." How long had it been since Sheik had told Link those words? It felt like an eternity.

"If one has a pure heart, it becomes a paradise. If one has an evil heart, it will become full of evil. The Triforce acts in response - if one's heart is in balance with power, courage, and wisdom, then they will become master of the Triforce and the Sacred Realm and will gain the True Force to govern all. But if one's heart is not in balance, the Triforce will separate into its separate parts - power, courage, wisdom. Only one part will remain for the one who touched it, the part that represents that which they most believe in. And the other two pieces will go to those chosen by the Goddesses, those who bear the mark of the Triforce."

Janeway let out a thoughtful noise, leaning back. "That's your world's creation myth?"

And, for just a moment, Zelda saw red. "It's not a myth!" she found herself shouting, "It's true! It really happened - Ganondorf's heart was not in balance, and all he could snatch up was Power! Link now possesses Courage and I possess Wisdom and the legends played out _exactly as was foretold_!"

Holding up her hands in a placating way, Janeway nodded solemnly. "I apologise, I misspoke. But there is something more than meets the eye here - the readings we got from your... Triforce pieces?" Zelda nodded stiffly. "From your Triforce pieces indicated that they're extremely sophisticated technology. It's possible that not even _we_ will begin to understand what they are. The ones who must have made these must have been incredibly advanced."

"They're Goddesses." The words she spoke were almost bitten out, fingernails digging crescents into her palms. "Of course they're advanced."

Janeway didn't respond to that out loud, merely nodding. But Zelda didn't need the Triforce of Wisdom to understand the pitying look in her eye - she knew precisely what the captain was thinking.

She thought them foolish. She believed in computers and technology, and not in the Goddesses. Not in the Triforce. And the worst part was, there was every chance that she was actually correct.

What could their stories do against enemies that could come from the sky and saviours who could whisk them away with a second thought? The Triforce certainly hadn't protected them from the attack.

"I'm going to go now," she told Janeway hoarsely, stumbling to her feet, making for the door that led to the bridge and the turbolift. Link, for the moment, would be too painful to see, and the solitude of her room seemed unwelcome. "Mess hall," she told the turbolift, and felt her stomach lurch as the lift dropped.

It was quiet, but not empty. Keeping her head down, she made for a seat near the windows and practically collapsed in it, head in her hands.

A part of her, the part that had grown up on legends of the Golden Goddesses, who prayed to them every morning and every night, who had whispered silent pleas to them from her hiding place within Sheik, who knew that Nayru herself had reached out to touch her, was angry.

What right did Janeway have to say such things? How dare she raise her eyebrow and calmly describe Hyrule's most sacred relics, the very basis of their faith, their culture, their existence, as mere technology? Nayru, Farore, Din - they were not Janeway's Goddesses, and she had no right in denouncing their very existence!

Did she even understand, or was technology, computers, things that moved invisibly but with an explanation for every particle in the air, all she knew? Had she ever had faith?

And was faith enough?

Zelda could not deny it - Voyager was something well beyond anything they had ever dreamed. The transporters, the turbolifts, the replicators, the sheer act of flying in space... they had to have known what they were doing to get this far.

What if everything did have an explanation? What if faith wasn't enough?

There was a small square of clean white cloth in an outstretched hand before her face, and Zelda lifted her head in surprise, eyes clouded with the tears she hadn't realised were beginning to escape. And then she blinked - the man before her was far more obviously alien than anyone she had seen before, with a tuft of pale ginger hair on his head, odd spots and yellowed depressions marking his skin.

"You look like you could use a friend," he told her gently, and she smiled despite herself, wavering as it was. "I'm Neelix - welcome to Voyager! You're that princess girl from the planet, aren't you?"

"I suppose so," she said softly, taking the offered cloth and dabbing at her cheeks. "My name is Zelda. Did Captain Janeway tell you about us?"

"She did." There was a faint grinding sound as he pulled the other chair out, and then quiet again. "How's your stay been? I hope everything's been comfortable!"

Everything but her looming crisis of faith. Her smile, this time, was distinctly wobbly. "It's been comfortable. It's hard to relax knowing what happened, though, and..." Zelda shook her head. "Well, it's been difficult to adjust to... everything."

He nodded sympathetically, reaching out to pat her hand. It had been some time since she had been touched - Zelda almost recoiled before forcing herself to leave her hand where it was. "Pardon my asking, but how old are you?"

How old was she? Birthdays had since lost meaning. "Sixteen. I will be seventeen in the autumn."

He whistled, a long low note. "And they expect you to run a country?"

An eyebrow rose - there had been younger kings and queens in the past! One of her ancestors had been just fourteen when she had taken the throne - admittedly, due to the utter lack of anyone else alive to do so, but that was simply the path history took sometimes. "They do," she said stiffly. "There have been rulers younger than me in the past." And then she hesitated, glancing out the window at the world that hung there, blue and green and beautiful. "Granted," she continued quietly, "Most didn't have to rebuild after seven years of war from within our borders and a few minutes of devastation from above. In times past, I suppose that would have been grounds for using the Triforce..."

The crack in her voice was definitely audible there. "Why can't you use it now?" Neelix asked, honest curiosity in his voice.

"How can I use something that I don't even know is real?" she said bitterly instead, and dropped her head on to her arms, speaking into skin. "I suppose there's no room for sacred relics in a world like this."

"Tell me about it," Neelix prompted gently, and she did.

Words spilling out like water, tumbling over themselves, caught up and tangled, she told him her story. And she told him of Janeway's words, and the way she felt like her insides were caught in a knot, caught between logic and faith, between wisdom and courage. Perhaps she shouldn't have had wisdom in the first place, if she was so blind to the evidence presented before her - perhaps she was not as blessed as she had thought she was.

And Neelix listened, reaching out to hold one of her hands between his. "A few years ago," he told her as the stream of words finally ran dry, "I died. And they bought me back with science. And I learnt that there wasn't the afterlife I had expected - my sister wasn't waiting for me in the Great Forest." He laughed a little hollowly. "Everything I had been taught for years - well, it turned out that it just wasn't in my experience. Maybe the Great Forest knew that it wasn't _really_ my time yet, maybe it really doesn't exist - but you can still find meaning in _something_. Science doesn't explain everything."

"Captain Janeway believes it's technology," she said, eyes downcast. "If it is, then Hyrule was founded on a lie."

"Ask Captain Janeway about the Nechisti Order sometimes, huh?" And with that, Neelix stood, giving her another smile. "I'm Voyager's morale officer, you know. If you ever want to talk, well. You know where to find me."

She flashed him another smile, still hesitant, but her heart a little lighter at the promise of someone sympathetic to talk to. "Thanks," she told him quietly, and started for the turbolift.

Down in sickbay, Link sat back against the biobed, visible eye shadowed, mouth twisted, radiating exhaustion and misery. Quietly, pausing only to nod in acknowledgement to the three others, Zelda joined him at his side, reaching for his hand.

What would they do now?


	4. Act Three

What they would do, as the next day dawned, was to pay a visit to the captured cyborgs in the cargo bay.

After a restless sleep, Zelda had been formally introduced to Lieutenant Commander Tuvok, a tall and imposing man with, she had noted in curiosity, the only pointed ears she had seen thus far on the ship. He was in charge of security and weapons, Janeway had explained, and the stern expression on his face certainly seemed to fit.

Honestly, with the lack of visible emotion combined with what dealing with weapons would involve, Zelda was feeling rather intimidated.

The only sound as they made their way down the hall being the click of their heels, Zelda paused outside the doors, drawing in a steadying breath. Tuvok glanced at her, his face utterly blank. "The converted are held behind a force field," he told her as the doors opened, "They will not be able to harm you."

"It's not physical harm that concerns me," she admitted as they headed inside, glancing curiously at the glowing alcoves to one side and the marked contrast with plain boxes and barrels on the other side. At the far end, a faint golden sheen indicated the force field, and beyond that...

She exhaled slowly, gazing at them. Remains of humanity could be seen, yes - a patch of bare skin here, a tuft of hair there. But by and large, they were mechanical - artificial limbs, metal plating bound around their torsos, metal faces expressionless behind two glassy eye pieces.

Zelda recalled the eye piece fastened to Link's face, and shuddered.

"These are my people." And she had failed them - she had been unable to stop them being turned in to... this. "I should have been able to help them. I still should do whatever I can to help them."

"Your world is technologically immature," Tuvok pointed out, and she pulled a face at the bluntness of the statement, "Retaliation would have been impossible."

Nodding absently, she swallowed hard. "Well... if we can do something to help them, I will." And she stepped closer, close enough that the hum of the force field was audible, so that it buzzed against her skin and lifted the loose strands of her hair. It felt rather like standing on a mountain in a lightning storm...

Oh, what she wouldn't have given for a dry quip from Sheik about how ill-advised that was.

"If I wanted to talk to one," she asked Tuvok uncertainly, "Would that be dangerous at all?"

He considered for a moment. "So long as you remain on the other side of the force field, you will be in no harm," he decided, "However, I do not advise communication with them while unprotected."

Zelda nodded, then fixed her gaze on the closest one. "You," she called, and it turned to face her more fully, its eyes glowing forbiddingly. "Can you speak?"

"Yes."

One single word, spoken without infliction or emotion. Even with Tuvok, she could tell that there was something there - these were simply blank.

What to ask them next? This cyborg was a former Hylian, she was sure of it. "What do you remember?"

What came next was a surprise - a quickly-rattled description of Kakariko Village, the attack, and conversion, followed by a wooden, "Transportation. Combat. Capture." And then a description of the cargo bay, every single detail exactly as it was.

"Before that?"

It paused, almost confused, and then started from the beginning.

Did that mean it had no memories from before its conversion? Zelda frowned. "What's your name?"

"This one's designation is two two nine two eight four eight seven three five beta six four three."

Behind her, Tuvok was busily noting down what it had said on what she had now learnt was called a PADD, but Zelda was feeling a little too paralysed to consider taking notes. Then it had no name, just a number - and when had she started thinking of it as an 'it'?

"You don't remember your name from before conversion?" she asked softly, and again, it rattled off the precise description it had given before.

Was there anything left? Anything at all? Zelda gazed at it in despair, then turned on her heel. "Lieutenant Commander Tuvok, is there any way to determine if someone's mind is being suppressed?"

There was not even a flicker of curiosity on his face. "There is. Some races such as Betazoids are capable of telepathic contact with another. Vulcans possess the ability to meld minds with another - however, I do not believe that would be in any way advisable in this situation."

"Telepathic contact..." Zelda repeated to herself thoughtfully, gazing at the nearest cyborg. "If someone had some sort of psychic ability, but was unused to telepathy, would they be able to make contact with these...?" She trailed off helplessly, gesturing to the group behind the force field.

This time, Tuvok's answer came after a thoughtful consideration. "It is possible."

She nodded again, this time frowning. "I have prophetic dreams," she said without preamble, "I have since I was a little girl. That was how I was able to foresee Ganondorf's invasion and make preparations for it... for all the good that did," she added bitterly.

Tuvok gave her a look that was almost curious - Zelda had revealed little of her past to anyone on board the ship thus far, and perhaps this was the first time he had heard of such a thing. "And you wish to use these abilities to find a way to make telepathic contact," he confirmed. "I will not lie to you - it will be difficult. Psionic abilities can take many forms, and precognitive visions are merely one kind." There was a hard look on his face, perhaps the first distinguishable expression he had made. "There is also the question of unwanted telepathic contact being a great violation."

She had not yet taken her eyes off the cyborgs. "I know. I would _not_ try to read their minds, I don't even know if I can - I'd just try to talk to them. When they answered questions, it was like... someone was speaking for them. I want to hear what they would say for themselves. I owe it to my people to at least try!"

He gazed at her for a moment longer, then nodded once, a curt movement. "Then try."

It was all she needed. With a nod in return, she settled down cross-legged on the floor, eyes half closed, gazing up at the cyborgs through her eyelashes and the glow of the force field. Tuvok vanished, and so did the cargo bay and its contents around her - all that mattered now was communication.

She had to concentrate. Impa had taught her, a long time ago, how to focus her mind. She had used it to draw information out from her dreams, to turn abstract images into something identifiable, to turn a grey and green figure with a shining point above its head into a boy holding a stone and accompanied by a fairy. Now, she would use it to save the boy with the fairy, to save the others on this ship - to save Hyrule.

She had to concentrate, and reach out. Eyes closed now, she could visualise the barrier, picture the cyborgs before her. When Link had begun to awaken in the Sacred Realm, she had sensed him then, even from within Sheik - a bright spark that grew and grew into a flame.

She could sense no flames now - not even a spark. Instead, the darkness seemed to be punctuated with parts so vividly dark that their surrounds almost seemed bright, shadow within shadow. They were not just absent, they were almost a negative - something that walked, talked, looked so superficially like a person, but so utterly empty inside that they sucked away the light around them.

There was no mind, no conscious thought, nothing remaining of the people they had once been.

There was nothing there.

Nothing.

_Nothing._

Zelda let out a ragged gasp, her eyes snapping open as she scrambled to her feet, almost skittering back from the force field. Tuvok's gaze was on her, but she only stared at the floor, shaking gently.

"What did you see?" he asked, and she lifted her head.

"Nothing," she said, voice quavering, then turned her back on her former people and walked away.

At this moment, the ship was the last place she wanted to be. She wanted to be in the open air, to find somewhere quiet and calm and peaceful, nothing the sound of running water and birdsong and the wind in the trees on the air. Perhaps the holodeck could have helped, but Janeway had yet to show her how it worked, and she didn't exactly want to guess at it.

Instead, she returned to her temporary quarters, dropping herself down on the bed. It was nice having a bed again, even if the very air seemed to hum with the vibration of the ship, and she almost found herself dozing.

Almost. The brief and horrifying contact was enough to ensure that she definitely wouldn't be able to relax for a good long while.

This was no good. Rolling off the bed, she padded to the replicator and requested a steaming hot cup of tea, and, since it was approaching lunch anyway, a few slices of soft bread and some good cheese. It would take a little while to get used to the richness of royal feasts again, she thought with a sigh as she moved to the little table, especially after technically not eating anything for seven years.

And suddenly, she found herself missing Sheik with an intensity that was almost startling. After the deed had been done, there had been no time to mourn, not with Ganondorf's attack. And then had come the battle, and the invasion, and finding herself on Voyager...

But now, with Link and the others at their morning session and the visit with the cyborgs complete, she had nothing but time to mourn.

She had only been small when he had come to her, a terrified child sobbing in Impa's arms at the loss of her family and her home, at the plan that had gone drastically, drastically wrong. As she had cried into Impa's shoulder, she had been aware of a hand in her hair, stroking reassuringly, a friend to watch over her. Impa's voice had been quiet as she had explained how Sheik would protect her. He would hide her away from prying eyes, be a guardian when other duties drew Impa away, to ensure that she remained safe until the time came to reclaim her home.

And she had come to love Sheik, even as she had felt her body dissolve into nothingness, limbs lengthening and strengthening, her body reforming until she stared out of a Sheikah's eyes. He had been a constant companion, the one who kept her safe and sane throughout seven years.

And then he had said his goodbyes and had vanished to where ever he had come from.

A few days ago, she would have assumed (and he would have confirmed) that it had been the afterlife - that he was the soul of a Sheikah who had given his life for her family years ago and yet still served it still. Now, she couldn't be sure - no doubt Janeway would have some scientific explanation, but all Zelda could be sure of was that he had been there and now he wasn't.

It hurt. She wanted nothing more than for Sheik's quiet reassurances, his promises that they would see things through.

Putting down her crust of bread, she let out a sigh. He would probably also tell her that dwelling on the past would do nothing, and the most important part would be to focus on the future.

Perhaps he was right - she just wished she knew what the future would hold. There were so many questions that needed answers, and nothing clear ahead. Finding those answers, shaping her future would be a long and hard path.

Once her lunch was gone, she got to her feet again. Link probably would have finished his session by now, and she owed it to him - to all four of them - to see how they were progressing. Setting her lips in a firm line, she started for sickbay.

She'd have to work out what to do, and a good start would be to ask what the most immediate victims wanted to do. If they had some idea of how they wanted their future to be shaped, she would have something to work towards to - well, ideally, their future wouldn't be one with cybernetic body parts, but looking for a best case scenario would certainly be a help in their recovery...

But she couldn't help but wonder. What did those futures look like? The last she had seen Link, he could barely move his metallic parts - how could they ever resume the lives they had lived before?

With a heavy heart, she entered sickbay, a faint smile crossing her face when she spotted all four sitting up in their beds. They were properly clothed now, a plain grey tunic that hung oddly off mechanical shoulders, metal arms extending from the sleeves - but it certainly was an improvement to being clad in nothing.

"Good afternoon," she told them with a brief smile, getting one in return from Link. The other three, she couldn't help but notice, seemed to be a little more wary...

"Good afternoon, your highness," the eldest of the three finally said, both metal hands folded in front of her. "This young man here -" A nod in Link's direction - "Has been telling us how you've fared over these long years."

Casting Link a startled look, he shook his head minutely, tucking his left hand beneath the sheets. Nothing about the Triforce, at least, then.

Another, a younger woman, gave her a sympathetic look. "It must have been terrible, hiding away for seven years... It's alright. He told us that... that _man_ would have killed you if your hiding place had been found."

Oh, her hiding place had been found. And seen, frequently, in Hyrule. Ganondorf had just never realised that her hiding place was another living being - or whatever Sheik was.

"Thank you. However, I must apologise sincerely for my absence," she told them seriously. "I never wanted to leave Hyrule to face seven years of pain, and I never wanted you to face this latest trial - but I assure you, I am not going to leave again."

Her hands were curled so tightly into fists behind her back that her nails were leaving crescent marks on her palms. She could almost hear her pulse, thudding in her ears. These were promises she intended to keep.

Drawing in a steadying breath, she unfurled her hands. "But in the mean time, we're going to be here for a while," she told the group. "Please, tell me about yourselves..."

It had been an experience. Zelda had had little opportunity to interact with anyone who hadn't been a noble, a servant, or, more recently, the Voyager crew. Over the course of the seven-year war, Sheik had kept to himself, and thus Zelda had spoken to very few people. Now, she found herself in the company of an artist, a tailor, and a blacksmith, and, ever-present almost at her side, a hero.

Doroti had kept her metal hands folded and her head held high, white curls pinned back neatly (later, she had learned, it had been with the Doctor's assistance) as she spoke of rediscovering the world without an artist's hands. Stoic Rocky had questioned whether he would ever go swimming again (Doroti had shuddered visibly), gazing at his metal leg - he had got off the lightest, with just the one limb replaced, but metal wasn't exactly the most buoyant of materials. At least he still had use of his hands, he had said in relief, even if his red hair was beginning to grey, he would still be able to craft metals. It was Alva who was the closest to despair - she had been creative, flamboyant, had enjoyed the finer things in life (or, at least, what of the finer life could be scavenged during wartime). So much of her life had revolved around creating beauty to garb the population of Hyrule in - how, she asked, could she do that now?

One theme remained common to all three. They all wanted to go home to Kakariko. But would Kakariko be willing to welcome them back? That question, more than anything, was what weighed most heavily upon them.

"I'll go back," Zelda said suddenly, and four heads raised to look at her. "If I am able - I will learn what I can, see how the village is coping. Are there..." Her gaze softened. "Are there any messages you want me to pass on?"

There were a few, and Zelda carefully noted them down on a piece of replicated paper (once she had explained to the blasted machine what, exactly, it was). Link alone had nothing to say to Kakariko, and she watched him through her eyelashes. He hadn't expressed any desire to go anywhere, he hadn't had any messages to pass on...

"Princess," he called softly once she was done taking the other messages, and she headed to his bedside. "If you can, can you go back to - to where the castle was? We need to get the Master Sword back, and the ocarina."

She nodded, a lump in her throat. It had been days - she hoped the ocarina was still safe.

"And," he continued, his head down, "Can you find Navi?"

Zelda's breath caught in her throat. Navi - the little blue fairy who had solemnly swore to fight at Link's side. She hadn't even given Navi a thought, the entire time she had been on the ship - but for Link, she must have been on his mind greatly. "I will," she confirmed, "I promise."

He smiled then, the first properly relieved smile she had seen on his face in quite a while. "Thanks."

She smiled back, reaching out to rest a hand on his own flesh and blood one. "It's alright. And please, call me Zelda."

The words had been quiet, almost furtive. She had already drawn divisions in her head, she realised, setting Link aside from the other three. Was it just that he was the Hero of Time that made her see him differently? She wasn't sure, but she did know that she felt differently towards him than any others. The others, she wouldn't be so informal with.

"Zelda," he murmured, then nodded. "Okay."

Her smile, this time, was a little sad. "Thank you." She hesitated a moment, then added, "What will you do? When we return?"

His gaze flicked away again, one blue eye fixed on the fabric of the sheet. His arm, the metal one, had jerked as well, and she found herself staring before she could look away.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I can't go back to the forest - it's only for Kokiri, and the Deku Sprout told me that I'm really a Hylian. But I have nowhere to go in Hyrule, either. Um - do you know if the forest is okay?"

That had been a bit of an abrupt switch, but she nodded nonetheless. "I asked them to, ah, scan the rest of Hyrule," she reassured him, "The attacks were limited to Kakariko Village and, well, there wasn't enough left of Castle Town for it to really matter. The Gorons, Zora, and Kokiri are all safe, and they were still approaching Gerudo Valley when Voyager stopped them."

Cyborg Gerudo. Zelda tried to resist a shudder - she dreaded to think what that would be like.

But the Gerudo could not be ignored. The seven years of war hadn't just been monster versus Hylian - it had also been Gerudo versus Hylian, at least for those who still followed their king. Enough had turned their back that she was hardly about to condemn all of them, but careful diplomacy would be required, and potentially, action against those who refused peace.

She wouldn't make the same mistakes as her father, virtually banishing them to the desert. If they were willing to abide by Hyrule's laws, she could see no reason why they couldn't become a true part of the kingdom.

But still, it could be dangerous...

"When we return," she said before she could change her mind, "I'd like to offer you a place. I'd like for you to join my personal guard." Her smile wavered again. "Now that Sheik is gone... I still need protection. And I'd like for it to be you."

Link gave no answer, still gazing at the sheet. The silence prickled uncomfortably on Zelda's skin, and she longed to know what, exactly, was going through his mind. Finally, he shook his head almost imperceptibly. "I can't," he said softly, his good hand tightening on the fabric. "I can't even walk. How am I supposed to protect you?"

Biting the inside of her cheek, she reached out to rest a hand on his good one. "You'll learn to do that again in time," she said, hopefully reassuringly and not quite believing it herself. "Walking and running and fighting and - and playing the ocarina -" Her voice cracked a little. "Or - or I could teach you to play the lyre, I learnt a little when I was small and I still remember how it felt when Sheik played it - or..."

He sighed, letting go of the covers he had wrinkled and flipping his hand around to catch hers. "You don't have to lie to make me feel better."

"I'm _not_." She grit her teeth a little. "The Doctor said that you'll get your mobility back. It just - you'll have to relearn how to do things - it'll be okay!"

There was a mirthless laugh from her other side, and Zelda started a little - she had forgotten the others were still there. "Thank you, your highness, but we've been changed," Alva told her hollowly. "It's most likely that we won't be able to live the lives we had before. You should accept it - we're not exactly flesh and blood any more. We're not people, we're monsters."

The Doctor hadn't been far this entire time, and now he approached, folding his arms over his chest. There was a hard, blazing look in his eye, and Zelda found her protests dying on her tongue. "If you write yourself off as monsters, then that's all you'll be," he told them firmly, focusing primarily on Alva and Link. "You're not monsters, you're _cyborgs_ , and just because you've changed doesn't mean you don't possess personhood. I didn't fight hard to preserve your minds so you could give up! In twenty-three sixty-five, Starfleet officially determined that Commander Data, an entirely man-made android, was a sentient being just like any of us! _Seven_ is a person! _Icheb_ is a person! And -" He paused carefully. "Well, I certainly see _myself_ as a person. But you! You most certainly _are_ persons and not _monsters_ , even if you have cybernetic parts."

And he harrumphed, leaving Zelda slightly open-mouthed and staring.

"What... do you mean, you see yourself as a person?" Link asked tentatively from beside her. "You look normal to me."

"I'm a hologram," he told him, voice terribly clipped. "Although I have by _far_ exceeded the role that Starfleet originally envisioned for me."

That certainly killed the conversation flat. Zelda gaped a little as the Doctor went about his business - not once had she seen him as anything other than a person. Admittedly, a rather blunt one, but a person nonetheless. She had had no reason to see him as anything other than flesh and blood.

"What's a hologram?" Link whispered, glancing sidelong at the Doctor. Zelda bent over, her mouth close to his remaining ear.

"They're made of light. From the way the captain explained it, they sound a little like illusions. But he's _definitely_ got his own mind..."

Link nodded in agreement, gesturing to the others with his good hand. "You should tell the others. It might help, I guess." A tiny frown crossed his lips. "He seems like a person to me too... maybe if he's a person, and he's a hologram, then I'll still be okay."

And his voice cracked, biting down on his lip.

Zelda gave his hand a squeeze, and with another backward glance, went to explain the situation to the others. It was a bit of hope, yes - but there was still a very long way to go.


	5. Act Four

"- and if you need an emergency beam out back to the ship for whatever reason, activate the security beacon and they'll be able to get a lock on you."

Zelda nodded firmly, tucking the beacon as securely as she could at the top of one glove. (One nice thing she had discovered about Voyager's clothing - the existence of pockets. Gowns did tend to lack them, and now she missed them rather sorely.) "Thank you, Commander Chakotay," she told the man with a careful smile. He was the second in command, Tuvok had explained as they had headed down to the shuttle bay on deck ten, and he would be on charge on what he called an away mission.

It was only away if you lived on a ship. To Zelda, she was simply going home for a time.

Their mission was fairly clear. They would land at the site of the battle, and Zelda would search for the Master Sword, ocarina, and, with some luck, Navi. Then, they would travel to Kakariko Village - normally a trip of several hours, but one of only a matter of minutes in the Delta Flyer II.

"Here she is!" exclaimed their pilot, introduced as Tom Paris. "The finest flyer in the delta quadrant. I hope she's to your satisfaction, your highness." And he gave a deep bow, rising to give her a cocky grin.

Zelda grinned back reluctantly, utterly unsure what to make of this rather peculiar man. Still, he was the best pilot they had (apparently), and had designed the shuttle himself. If they had said that it was safe, then she at least could try trusting him.

And then they were off, Zelda's eyes widening as Voyager shrank behind them and the world began to grow bigger and bigger. It loomed up before them, impossibly huge, and Zelda's hands tightened on the arm rests of her seat as clouds suddenly whipped into view.

They were going lower and lower, penetrating the clouds, all of Hyrule and its surroundings spread out before them like a map come to life. Here, she could see the full extent of the mountains north of Castle Town, their white peaks glowing in the sunshine. A vast desert was visible to their left, rivers and lakes (was Lake Hylia really that small from the air?) glittering silver.

The darkness of the forest stood out like coarse wool against the paler green silk of the gently undulating field, the paths and fences that criss crossed it invisible until they dropped ever lower, all the while approaching the smudge of darkness that she knew was once the castle she had been born and raised in...

Glancing guiltily in the direction of Kakariko Village, noting damage to the windmill immediately and reminding herself to find out the full extent of the damage, she turned back to the task at hand. Skimming low enough over the town to find that it had been cleared of ReDeads, the flyer settled down on a blasted rocky slope that was once the path up to her home. Barely hearing the checks going on, she stood, wetting her dried lips with her tongue, preparing herself for the worst.

"Mostly stable," Commander Chakotay confirmed as he scanned the area, glancing back at her. "That thing is eventually going to slip and fall, and there's a very thin crust over the lava. I don't recommend falling off it."

"I'll remember that," Zelda told him, stomach churning in nervous anticipation as she set foot on an old pillar.

Link had fought for both their lives, here...

It was the ocarina she managed to find first, still partially wrapped in its leather pouch. Caked with dust on its exposed surface but otherwise intact, she clutched it in both hands, eyes closing. All too easily, she could remember big fingers over little ones, Impa carefully coaching her in a song. The ocarina was more than just the instrument that Link had used on his journeys, more than an instrument to use in duets with Sheik.

It was a memory.

"Hey!" A sudden, high pitched, and rather irate voice penetrated her reverie, and Zelda jumped. "Hey, what are you doing with that thing? Didn't anyone tell you it was rude to snoop? Hey, _listen_!"

...And that was a voice she would know anywhere. Hurrying towards the source of the voice and Tom Paris's half-laughed apologies, she felt something in her chest lighten.

There was the Master Sword, half buried in the ground. There was its scabbard, just a few feet away. And there was Navi the fairy, alive, well, and spirited.

"Navi?" she called with a gentle smile, and the fairy whirled around (or so she thought, from the movement of her wings). "I'm glad you're alright. Link has been worried about you."

"Princess Zelda! Where is he? There were metal things! I couldn't get close! And you disappeared! And then these red lights came down from the sky and all the metal things disappeared! And I got stuck here with no one else but me and there were Guays and I had to hide because Guays _eat fairies_ , you know, but I couldn't leave because the Master Sword was here and if someone stole it I'd never, ever forgive myself but I've been alone all this time and is Link okay? Where is he? Who are those guys?"

Zelda blinked once, mildly stunned at the stream of words. Navi was fluttering before her, bobbing and weaving almost desperately, and she held out a hand for the possibly exhausted fairy to alight on.

"He's -" She paused for a moment. "He's alive. He was injured by those metal things - they're called Rycians. We've been on a ship called Voyager, they're the ones who rescued us."

"A ship?" Navi bobbed once, almost uncertainly. "What's a ship?"

She considered for a moment longer. "It's like... a very large building, but it's in the sky and it can travel places. Navi, the stars..." There were none in the sky, but she glanced up anyway. "The stars - they're all suns. And around them, there's different worlds, like ours. Voyager is from very, very far away, and so are the Rycians, and..." She sucked in a breath, glancing away guiltily. "The Rycians fight with cyborgs, people who have metal parts. They turned a lot of good people into them, and they tried to turn some of the others. Including Link."

Navi was silent. This, more than anything, spoke volumes to Zelda about her shock.

"He wasn't fully turned," she continued, voice a little on the hoarse side. "He's still... Link. But his arm and leg and eye - they're metal now, and he has it all over his body. They have to teach him how to walk again."

Still, she was silent. And then she bit out the words, hard and pained. "Take me to him."

Deflating, she nodded, turning to the other members of the away team. "Can we take her up to Voyager?" she asked quietly. "Using the - transporters?"

Commander Chakotay nodded, stepping forward and beckoning for Navi to join him. "We can do that, sure. I'll take her up myself." Tapping his badge, he spoke into it - "Voyager, there's a small life form here who wants to visit one of the patients. Can you take us directly to sickbay?"

There was an affirmative, and with a nod from Zelda, Navi flew uncertainly to join Chakotay. "Two to beam up."

And then they were gone, dissolving into blue.

It was an astonishing sight, and Zelda's eyes widened a little at it. Had that been what it had looked like during her own transportation?

"Commander Chakotay will return shortly," Tuvok told her, "In the mean time, we should load anything you wish to bring back to the ship into the shuttle."

Zelda mumbled a reply, approaching the sword almost cautiously. Link was the Hero of Time, and the sword was his - would it even let her touch it?

It did. Indeed, it almost seemed to be warm beneath her hand, comfortable. She _knew_ this sword, and it knew her. And yet she still only handled it just enough to return it to its sheath, picking it up by the strap as she slowly made her way back to the shuttle.

It was still Link's sword.

Chakotay returned soon enough, and once a variety of checks that Zelda could barely follow took place, they took to the air again. This time, they stayed low and slow, nothing like the descent from earlier. It would still only take a bare few minutes to Kakariko, though, and Zelda could feel her heart begin to beat just a little bit harder at the idea of confronting... everyone.

"Set us down in the grass near the foot of the stairs," she told Tom in a quavering voice, "I don't want to terrify everyone with the shuttle."

Plus, the long walk up the stairs would be rather ideal for helping her actually clear her thoughts...

With the Master Sword and ocarina safe and secure on the shuttle, Zelda brushed off her dress (for this, she had returned to her gown and tiara, complete with its pauldrons and Triforce earrings, freshly repaired and cleaned) and set foot upon the stairs.

And then another.

And another.

By the time she had reached the landing halfway up, the beginnings of a speech had begun to form. It was going to require a lot of explanation, that much she knew - the nature of her seven-year absence, what had happened in the attack, the news that, yes, Ganondorf was actually gone.

Glancing back at the away team, who were trailing back, letting her take the lead (their uniforms were hardly common to Hyrule), she smiled tentatively and started up the second lot of stairs.

Would they have even known that the tyrant of seven years was dead? She knew that the residents of Kakariko Village stayed well away from the ruins of Castle Town, and she doubted Ganondorf was particularly fond of visiting. Had the monsters begun to diminish, perhaps? Had the town begun to recover from the fire that had sprang up when Bongo Bongo had broken free?

They had reached the last stretch of grass. Zelda swallowed back her fear, raised her head, and stepped forward, meeting the gaze of the rather startled soldier lounging at the gate.

What would he make of her? The last time she had been seen by the public, she had been nine years old.

There was no recognition on his face, though, and the spear in his hand wobbled alarmingly. "Who goes there?" he called, voice audibly quavering.

Giving him her best smile, both hands held up, palms out, she approached slowly. "It's been a long seven years, hasn't it?" she said softly. "I don't blame you for not recognising me. I am Princess Zelda."

He gaped. And then he snapped to attention fast enough that she was sure he'd sprain something, eyes comically wide. "Y-your Highness!" he gasped, "We've been awaiting this day...!" A frown crossed his face, and Zelda glanced back to see the members of the away team emerging from up the stairs.

"Don't be alarmed," she said quickly, "I know their dress is unfamiliar, they're -" A pause. "Foreign. They have been protecting me these last few days."

"Last few days..." The guard sounded almost pensive, glancing back at the town. "The attack? What new wizardry does _that man_ have?"

"Ganondorf is dead." And briefly, she allowed herself to be pleased at herself, at how steady her voice had remained.

The guard dropped his spear.

Exhaling slowly, she straightened up. "I would like to address the town," she explained quietly, "There is much I need to explain."

He nodded shakily, retrieving the spear with a trembling hand. "I'll bring you and your, um, protectors to the inn. You can rest there until everyone is gathered."

"That is fine."

So far, so good, Zelda told herself as she followed the guard into the village. Here, the scars of battle were evident - a shattered window, a hole in a wall hastily patched with wooden beams. The inn was close to the entrance, though, and she barely had the chance to glance up at the windmill, two of its sails broken, before they arrived.

The innkeeper reacted much the same as the guard had, the tankard she had been holding hitting the ground with a thump that made it all the more impressive that it hadn't actually shattered. Chakotay plucked it up as it landed near his feet, offering it back with a smile; the innkeeper merely stared.

Zelda didn't blame her. The missing princess and three adult men in strange uniform probably made for an odd sight. Still, she recovered swiftly, ushering them to a private room off to one side, bringing in a plate of bread and good, proper, Hylian tea. Zelda drank deeply and felt her nerves begin to fade away.

Really, what had she been worried about?

 

If nothing else, for the sake of her dignity, Zelda was at least glad that she could hold off the tears until reaching the shuttle.

Tom, Chakotay, and Tuvok politely turned away, she drew her legs up to her chest in her seat, wrapped her arms around them, bowed her head and let herself begin to cry, silent tears dripping down her cheeks.

_"Where have you been all this time?"_

_"Why didn't you help us earlier?"_

_"You abandoned us!"_

And she had.

She had.

Seven years of war, and she had done nothing.

Zelda was barely aware of the shuttle docking, starting a little when the hatch opened. Then she swiped her gloved hand over her face and gathered up the ocarina and Master Sword, her head down as she stepped off the craft.

It was only a matter of walking to the turbolift and requesting deck three to get back to her own quarters. For Zelda, it felt like an eternity until she reached the door, Chakotay giving her a concerned look before taking his leave. She set the sword and ocarina down on the table, slipped off her shoes, sat down on the edge of the bed...

And, alone once more, let the tears fall again.

This time, free from the scrutiny and others, she could let herself cry properly, deep, chest-wracking sobs that left her throat aching and her eyes stinging and raw. She could feel her face grow damp, could feel the silk of her gloves growing sodden, and yet she could not bring herself to stop. Reaching for the pillow, she hugged it to her chest, smothering her weeping with it as she curled up on the covers.

Her head was pounding. And a part of her told her that she deserved it - that this was not nearly punishment enough for a princess who had abandoned her people in their time of greatest need.

She could see the damage. She could see the injuries. She could see the accusations in the eyes of those she had delivered letters to, questions on why she hadn't done enough to help them.

And still, the biggest question of all had yet to be answered: what happened next? Where did they go from here? The crowd had been hostile enough after her disappearance - how could she rally them together to recover from their common enemy? How had the Gorons and Zoras and Gerudo viewed the attack, would they use it for their own gain? It hadn't been so long ago that Hyrule was in the grips of civil war, and now she could easily see it taking hold, insidious and silent, once again.

She was uncertain and she was afraid. Whatever the future would hold, she could not see - and yet she, more than anyone else, had to take responsibility for bringing Hyrule to salvation.

All she wanted to do was to hide away, for Sheik to protect her, for Impa to reassure her, for Link to have lived out his life in peace and not as he was now. She needed her past, needed the people who had been lost and the people who had been irreparably changed, and that past was gone forever.

All that was left was an uncertain future. And so, she mourned.

 

At least Link's spirits seemed a little brighter.

Some time after her arrival back on the ship, once she was properly composed (or at least appeared properly composed - despite her dry eyes and neat hair, she felt as if a scream was barely held back by a dam in ill repair), she returned to sickbay. Link was there, Navi nestled against his still organic shoulder, quiet murmuring audible from their bed.

She would be of help to him, Zelda was certain of it. Navi had looked out for him since he had been a child, innocent of war and of the world, and she would continue doing so now.

Raising his head when the slid open with a faint hiss, a smile popped on to his face. "Hi - is that the Master Sword?" His gaze had gone immediately to the sword she was now holding by its strap, and she glanced down at it.

"It is," she told him formally. "Eventually, the sacred blade shall be returned to its resting place in the Temple of Time -" At that, whispers from the three Kakarikan residents erupted - "But for now, you are its rightful wielder." And she laid the sword down at his left side, hiding a smile at the way his fingers immediately went for the hilt, tracing the patterns of the wings, his fondness for the weapon clearly evident.

Maybe they wouldn't have to return it just yet.

To the other three, she turned, giving them a nod in acknowledgement. "I have delivered your letters," she told them, "I-it is my hope that the next time I travel to Hyrule, you will be travelling with me."

If there was a next time. At the moment, the idea of stealing away on Voyager and leaving forever seemed alarmingly appealing.

And what reactions would they receive, indeed? She knew that the letters the three Kakarikans had written had explained what had happened to the best of their abilities. Surely their loved ones would accept them - but what about strangers? What about clients? A blacksmith with a metal leg wouldn't appear too outlandish, but an artist with two mechanical hands? A tailor whose body now angled in unexpected ways? What remained of their careers, their livelihoods?

Zelda let out her breath slowly, then returned to Link's bedside, getting a sleepy greeting from Navi. "Link," she started, her voice soft, "The ocarina -"

"It's yours," he said immediately, giving her a rather sad smile. "I bet Saria's ocarina is still there somewhere - I think I left it in my tree house. The Ocarina of Time is yours."

And she shook her head. "That wasn't what I was going to say," she chided gently, reaching for his good hand and setting the instrument in it. "I was going to say that I want you to have it. When you play it, you can remember Sheik that way."

He was silent for a moment, then said, very softly, "How?"

And it hit her then, glancing at his cybernetic hand, at thin, tapered metal fingers that could not quite cover the holes in an ocarina.

She almost slapped herself in her insensitivity.

"Well - just as a keepsake?" she offered feebly, bowing her head. "I'm sorry, I forgot..."

He chuckled a little, the sound strained. "It's okay. Keep it for now, it has a lot of memories for you too."

She nodded once, still not meeting his gaze. "Just for now. We don't have to decide immediately, right?" The smile she offered was definitely on the apologetic side, but the one Link returned was immediately forgiving. Zelda couldn't help but feel just a tinge better about the whole affair.

Still, the question remained - what happened now? What happened when they left Voyager and returned to a world that, after the past few days, seemed almost primitive? Voyager could help them in some way, she was certain of it.

She just had to work out how.

"I need to go talk to Captain Janeway," she decided suddenly, giving Link a slightly more relaxed smile. "I'll come back later this evening, alright?" Glancing at the others, she added, "To see all of you."

Link nodded, and there were murmurs of agreement from the others. And with that idea in mind, a plan, a concrete direction on where to go, she took off at a rate of knots.

 

Perhaps fitting for the bearer of the Triforce of Wisdom, no matter what it actually was, Zelda's plan was to learn.

Those on Voyager knew more than she did, that much was clearly evident. And the world, their world, Hyrule which suddenly seemed so much smaller, had changed. The best way to keep up with this new world of theirs, Zelda had decided, was to learn what she could. And she had chosen to start with the captain.

If nothing else, Janeway seemed amenable to Zelda learning more about the sciences, and a cynical part of Zelda's mind suggested that it was because she was probably hoping that she'd stop talking about magic quite so much. And at any rate, she argued, four of her people were cyborgs now. What if something happened to them when Voyager was long gone? She would not condemn them to death, and that meant learning everything she possibly could learn about mechanics and engineering.

On the ship, she had found herself with four new teachers.

Seven of Nine, who had seemed startling at first, proved to... still be startling on occasion, her manner blunt and her speech technical. In the astrometrics laboratory, she provided Zelda with basic primers on chemistry and physics, answering her ceaseless questions almost emotionlessly. (Zelda found herself reminded, a little, of Tuvok.) And yet a faint hint of humour could be detected sometimes - buried deep, but a slight wry touch that Zelda found herself appreciating amidst the lessons. From physics and chemistry came astronomy, and knowledge of the moon and sun, the nature and lives of stars, their nearest neighbours and the furthest strangers.

Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres was a tough, abrupt woman who spent much of her time in main engineering, a room that seemed to be startlingly reminiscent of a technological temple, complete with altar (the warp engine, B'Elanna had explained, and Zelda had gazed up at it in awe). But even though her bluntness was reminiscent of Seven, she seemed to be alive with passion, jumping from one activity to the next, pausing occasionally to help Zelda out as she puzzled over a child's primer to technology. The physics and chemistry, at least, could be applied to Hyrule. A warp engine, however, was far beyond her understanding, and Zelda found herself obliged to focus purely on the basics of mechanics and cybernetics and what to do if things went wrong.

Classes with Neelix were far more informal. In the kitchen off to one side of the mess hall, Neelix instructed her in the peoples of the Delta Quadrant - and in cooking, so that they might have some treat to enjoy after each lesson. And while he admitted that this region was still somewhat new to him, he could explain to her about the great travellers of the quadrant, about enemies like the Borg that Seven and Icheb had escaped from, about his own people, the Talaxians, about those that they had seen most recently on their journeys, those whose homes laid relatively close. A thousand cultures in the skies - even news of hostilities could not dim Zelda's fascination.

And in sickbay, from the Doctor, she learnt about the body, how blood pumped through her veins and how air filled her lungs. She learnt the beginnings of first aid and how to care for the injured, and although she had seen through Sheik's eyes as he patched up his own wounds during their encounters with the occasional monster, this was true, deep knowledge that she could put to use should misfortune ever befall anyone near her.

With this knowledge, she could, perhaps, learn to start healing Hyrule as well.

And there was the added advantage. While she remained on friendly terms with Doroti, Rocky, and Alva, she and Link had begun to grow... closer.

One day on her way back to sickbay from the mess hall, bearing freshly-baked cake courtesy of one of Neelix's lessons, Zelda opened the door to find a remarkable sight - Link perched on the end of his biobed, swinging his left leg idly, smiling as Alva carefully took another step across the floor to the Doctor. "Good, good!" he told her enthusiastically, "Remember that your left foot is going to come up and down more heavily, try lifting your hip as you step up to take some of the weight off."

She did, and her stride evened out a little. Zelda would have applauded, had she not been holding a cake.

"Zelda!" Link smiled as he caught sight of her, carefully pushing off the bed, still holding on with his left, organic hand but otherwise stable on his feet. "The Doctor says we'll be able to leave sickbay!"

"Really?" A smile was beginning to spread across her face as she glanced across to the Doctor for confirmation. He was beaming like a proud father, holding an arm out for Alva to catch as she approached. "That's wonderful!"

The Doctor dipped his head, looking rather pleased with himself. "Not only that," he continued, "But I may be able to make some aesthetic changes - artificial skin, bionic eyes, better shape and form."

She blinked. "So they'll look...?"

"Human?" he supplied, then paused. "Well, Hylian, I suppose. But yes, for the most part. We won't be able to regrow limbs, but the replacements will look as good as new."

With that happy news, and permission from the Doctor, the group (and Zelda) would go to visit the mess hall, the place that offered the best view of the planet. Still holding on to the cake (really, she should have just left it in the mess hall to begin with, surely!), Zelda kept pace with Link, keeping a careful eye on him. He moved a little more slowly now, his gait still stiff, but there was improvement there all the same.

Perhaps these new limbs from the Doctor would help them adjust, she thought idly, help, at least, with the psychological aspect of looking down and seeing metal where you would ordinarily expect flesh.

And although she was the princess of all four, it was definitely Link she found herself looking towards as they stepped through the door and gazed upon Hyrule from above for the first time. The delight, the awe - it was worth it, and when the two of them found themselves a little separated from the other three and an enthusiastic Neelix, she hardly regretted it.

"It's beautiful," he murmured, gazing in the direction of Hyrule. "I guess we're the only people from Hyrule - ever - to see it like this, huh?"

She nodded solemnly, feeling something brush her right hand and unsurprised to find it was Link's left. "I'm glad I've got the opportunity to," she murmured, glancing sidelong at Link. "Just - what it took -"

He nodded, attention still on the view. "It took a lot to be able to see this," he murmured, and he gave her hand a squeeze. "And even though you've learnt all this stuff, you only needed to because of what happened."

"Exactly." She squeezed back. "If I could rewind this, I could..."

Tearing his gaze from the planet, he turned to study her, a faint frown on his lips.

Zelda, in turn, turned back to the planet. If she squinted, she could probably just make out Castle Town... "If I could turn back time," she said slowly, "If the Rycians were after the Triforce - I could make it so that Ganondorf never laid a hand on it. Hyrule wouldn't be attacked. Ganondorf wouldn't kill my father and take over. And you would be able to keep your seven years. If I go back to the castle and try to find where the Triforce of Power went, I could wish for all this to be undone."

"Playing with time travel tends to get you into trouble with the wrong sort of people."

That hadn't been Link. Zelda, startled, let go of his hand in a hurry, whirling around to find Captain Janeway leaning against the door, grimness all over her face. "There's something," she said, fixing Zelda with a stare, "That you need to know..."


	6. Act Five

"Captain Janeway," Link eventually said with a nervous smile, breaking the terse silence. "Do you want some cake? Zelda made some."

"I'll ask Neelix to save us a piece each." There was a faint smile on her face, but tension in her posture, and Zelda was at a loss on which to follow. "But we do need to talk. My ready room."

Zelda glanced across at Link, then nodded once, straightening up. "It's upstairs," she murmured to Link, starting after the captain. What could she want to talk to them about? Had they detected something about Hyrule? Something that would leave it in danger?

Link seemed in awe of the bridge, gazing every which way as Zelda led him to the ready room. Once settled on the seats there, Janeway collected drinks (coffee, black, for herself, tea for Zelda, and a glass of milk for Link), scooped up a PADD and approached, her expression grim again. "Zelda," she said bluntly, turning to the princess, "We've learnt more about this... Triforce of yours, and I need to know you're not going to blow up again."

So they had discovered the nature of their most sacred relic. For a moment, the world fell silent but for the pulse thudding in her ears. Delicately, like she was made of glass, she nodded once, and the captain began to speak.

The Triforce was a computer.

Her gaze fixed on a spot on the table, listening to her pulse thudding over Janeway's words, Zelda's hands curled into balls. The Triforce, their most sacred relic, the physical remnants of the Goddesses' power, was nothing more than technology, a computer that could warp reality around it. It was a telepathic interface that was seemingly attuned to something called DNA, her own and Link's, for reasons they were not entirely sure of. It could not see into people's deepest desires, it could not judge if their hearts were in balance.

It was a computer, and nothing more.

Link's hand slid against her own, and she stretched her fingers out to rub against the back of his hand, where she knew the Triforce mark rested.

There would be no travelling back to the battle zone to find the Triforce of Power. The Rycians, in their haste, had destroyed it along with Ganondorf, part of their land's foundation nothing but ash. And what could they have done with it, anyway? From what the Voyager crew had learnt of the Triforce's abilities, it could cut like a knife but could not sew together again, especially diminished with the Triforce of Power's loss.

Perfect for shattering a castle, for rending the land asunder. Not quite so good at restoring the damage done.

The pulse thudding in her ears was becoming a roar, and before she could think too much about it, she spoke.

"Captain, who are the Nechisti Order?"

Janeway stilled for a moment, pausing in her explanation about biosignatures and telepathic interfaces. "Neelix told you about that, did he?" she asked curiously, and Zelda shook her head.

"He didn't tell me anything, just..." She paused, suddenly self-conscious. "The last time we spoke about the Triforce. Afterwards, I was very upset -" Link glanced across at her, startled - "And he spoke to me about his own experiences with... with losing faith. At the end, he told me to ask you about the Nechisti Order. Who are they?"

For a moment, the captain didn't answer, sitting back in her chair with an expression of thoughtfulness. "The Nechisti Order... that was a few years back. We were visiting the Nechani, the local inhabitants there, and the Nechisti were a religious order. One of my crew was badly injured when she wandered too close to a sacred shrine."

"What happened?" Link interjected as Zelda mulled that over.

"The order put me through trials, a purification ritual - well, I assumed that the trials would change my biochemistry so we could find a cure for my crew member. Instead, it turned out that the trial was only what I expected of it." She smiled wryly. "In the end, despite the readings saying that the field around the shrine was lethal, I had to make a leap of blind faith. There was a scientific explanation for it in the end, of course, but..."

There was always a scientific explanation for it, wasn't there? Zelda's shoulders began to slump -

"...But I'm not so sure that science was entirely behind it. Sometimes, you do need to take a leap of faith."

"How is that relevant?" Zelda asked almost bitterly, still gazing at the table. "If the Triforce is a computer, then that means it wasn't made by Goddesses, and the foundation of Hyrule is a lie."

Janeway shrugged a little, taking a sip of her coffee. "You don't know that for certain. I've seen a lot of things that couldn't be explained and heard stories of others. The Q continuum could be looked upon as gods... hell, maybe your Goddesses _are_ Q."

Zelda wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but she was pretty sure the sudden sensation of abject doom was a bad omen.

Waving a hand, the captain added, "I'm just saying, don't abandon every belief just because you've learnt something new. Who knows? Maybe it was created by Goddesses. Bodies are just very sophisticated biological machines -" There was a mildly awkward pause as she glanced at Link, and Zelda bit her lip as she forced back a dry chuckle - "So there's no reason why sacred relics can't be technology as well."

Nodding glumly, Zelda finally raised her gaze to meet Janeway's. "What do we do now?" she asked quietly. "If this is just... technology." She held up her right hand, suddenly incredibly conscious of what was held within it.

Sitting back in her seat, Janeway took another sip of her coffee before speaking again. "We may be able to remove the pieces from the both of you, see if we can assemble it the best we can. If this Ganondorf was able to make use of the part he had, there's no reason why you two won't be able to use them as well. Who knows? They may come in handy."

To remove the Triforce pieces from their hands... Zelda glanced down at hers, frowning. "And do what with it?" she asked almost to herself, gazing at the skin. "If it can only sever, not create..."

"We don't actually know that," the captain pointed out. "We may be able to find out more if they're removed - or rather, you two can find out more, since you'll be the ones able to interface with it."

Zelda nodded again, frown deepening as she glanced across at Link. He glanced back, asking the silent question - what happened next? "We'll talk about it," she finally said, "And let you know."

This, at least, seemed to end the conversation, and Zelda started back for the mess hall. The other three Kakarikans had already left for a (careful) tour of the ship, Neelix explained as he cut them slices of cake, and they could hurry to join them or stay and have some cake.

Link's stomach growled, and the matter was decided.

"What do you think?" Link asked quietly as soon as Neelix was out of earshot, digging his fork into the cake. "We might be able to find stuff out."

Making a little uncertain sound (it was rude to talk with one's mouth full), Zelda swallowed. "I'm not sure," she admitted, "I want to be able to find a way to help restore Hyrule. But if the - the Triforce can only destroy after all, it may be risky to keep it around as a weapon. We don't know how this... biosignature thing works. Ganondorf could make partial use of it, at the very least."

With a sigh, Link dropped his head into his good hand. "It's really confusing, all this stuff," he muttered, glancing down at the hand still lying on the table. "I think it's been confusing since Navi came to me."

"Do you regret it?" Zelda blurted out before she could think too much about it, almost instantly regretting it herself. Why wouldn't he? His life had been ruined, his childhood stolen, his identity ripped away, his body changed irrevocably. Why wouldn't he regret something like that? He still had every right in the world to hate her for being the instigator in so much of his trauma.

Except that instead of recrimination, she got a smile and a shake of the head, good hand resting on the table and fingers stretching towards her. "No," he said, honestly and calmly. "Because I got to make really good friends, like Malon and Darunia and Sheik and you. It sounds really weird, but..." He hesitated. "It kind of feels like... like I was waiting my whole life to meet you. And even though all that stuff happened, I'm really glad it did."

Absurdly, Zelda could feel her eyes stinging and hot, biting down hard on her lip.

How could Link still be this kind, this sweet, after all he had been through? How could this radiance still exist in him throughout all the darkness? How could he have courage enough to be a hero and courage enough to keep his heart all through it?

Farore had selected her chosen well.

"I need to ask you something," she finally said, her head bowed. Link was at least a little aware of what was being held in the cargo bay, but she had spared him the details, and she was not aware of how he would possibly respond to learning of dozens of mutilated - possibly permanently - Hylians. "I - there were others. Before you, who the Rycians got to."

He frowned fractionally. "You mean others aside from Alva and Rocky and Doroti, right?" he guessed correctly, and Zelda nodded once.

Link seemed to be rather good at insightful comments. And oh, but Zelda needed some insight on what to do... "The others were... fully converted," she started slowly, half-heartedly turning her piece of cake into crumbs with her fork. "Which means that their... programming kicked in. And I spoke to one of them."

"Are you okay?" he asked immediately, and a hint of a sad smile crossed her face.

"I am. But..." She sighed heavily, setting her fork down. "But they're not. I tried to reach towards them telepathically, I thought maybe they were being suppressed by this... programming, but..."

Link made a wordless sound, a little gesture to go on, a tiny but encouraging smile on his face.

"But there was nothing there," she continued, her voice subdued. "It was like... if each person is a chest, and that chest fills with memories and experiences over the years until it's full, and looking through the chest tells you about them - this wasn't just that the chest was empty, since that implies that it could be filled once more. It was more that there _was_ no chest."

"What does that mean?" he frowned, absently digging at his cake. "If there was no chest - does that mean they weren't a person any more?"

"I think so." Scrubbing at her eyes with the heel of her hand, Zelda shook her head tiredly. "I'm not sure. It wasn't like... like what Alva said. She's still a person, so are you - so are Seven and Icheb, so is the Doctor. But this was empty, like they were just... machines, I suppose. All that was left was the programming."

With a sigh, Link lifted his head, meeting Zelda's gaze with one blue eye and one round glassy one. "Then I think they're dead," he said finally, voice terribly solemn and sober. "And - it's _not_ your fault, okay, so don't even think about blaming yourself. It was the Rycians that killed them. But... I think someone has to finish the job."

Kill them? Zelda lifted her head sharply. Link was suggesting that they be put to death? Link, who was so gentle even after all he had seen and done?

Instead of continuing verbally, instead, he reached for the fork with his cybernetic hand, carefully wrapping his fingers around it. And with the very faintest of squeezes, he bent it in half.

"I'm strong now," he explained softly, "Really strong, with this hand. That's part of the reason I don't want to play the ocarina, I don't wanna crush it. If they're fully converted, then that means they're really, _really_ strong. And Voyager can't keep them forever, right?"

She shook her head, protests dying in her throat.

"Then - Zelda, they're already dead," he almost pleaded. "If it was me, if I got fully turned into one of those things, I wouldn't want to hurt anyone accidentally, but I might not have had a choice. If you knew you were gonna get turned into a cyborg with programming that told you to kill everything, what would you want someone to do?"

Zelda bit down on the inside of her cheek, hard enough to draw blood. "I'd want someone to stop me," she whispered. "I wouldn't want to hurt anyone."

He nodded, reaching for her hand. "They're almost unstoppable - Hyrule would never be able to stop them. We've gotta make sure they never get back there. And - I think this might be the nicest way, right? That way, they don't have to hurt any of their friends or family."

The nicest way... shoulders slumping, Zelda nodded once. "I'll talk to the captain," she said quietly, "And ask her if there's a way that's - painless." And she let out a sigh. "I don't even know which ones are Hyrulean and which ones are... well, whoever the Rycians got to first, I suppose..."

Link's expression twisted a moment, letting go of her hand to brush his fingertips against his metallic arm, a quick gesture had she not been looking for it. "It's not their fault, either," he eventually said, the words forced out. "They got made like that as well, right?" A mirthless chuckle escaped. "I guess if Voyager hadn't got here, I'd be doing that as well, making new soldiers as well as fighting."

"You're not a soldier," Zelda choked out, suddenly aghast at the image of Link committing the same violations. "Link, you -"

"No, but I fight," he said quietly, gazing down at his contrasting hands, flesh and metal. "I'm not really that far from being one, am I?"

With a deep, steadying breath, Zelda reached out to cover both of Link's hands with her own. He started, flesh-and-blood hand twitching beneath hers, mechanical one utterly still and cold. And she hid a wince at the sensation of it, at the utter wrongness of feeling coldness where there should be warmth, hardness where there should be softness, stillness where there was once blood that flowed through his veins. "You're Link," she told him, meeting his gaze, forcing herself to properly look at the one blue eye and one glass one, at the plating that covered his skin, at the way his hair hung raggedly on that side, at the sliver of metal pressed along his jaw line. "You were raised by the Kokiri and it's as much of your past as your being a Hylian. You were asked to leave your home and you did it without hesitation because you believed it was the right thing to do. You became a hero because you wanted to help people, not because of destiny. You're a good person, and if you let me, I'd be proud to call you my friend, and you are nothing, _nothing_ like _them_."

And she stopped, a little out of breath at the passionate speech.

Link gazed at her for a moment longer, then carefully flipped his hands around, palms up beneath Zelda's. "Thank you." And a smile, a genuine smile, crossed his lips. "I'll stay with you, if you want. When it... happens."

"Thank you," she echoed, and squeezed both hands gently. "I should go talk to the captain about our decision... what should we do about this?"

He glanced at their hands, Zelda's right resting on his left, and frowned a little. "I think we should have them taken out," he eventually ventured, "Especially if you can figure out how to do more with it. There's gotta be a way to use them better, right?"

"Right," she echoed, gazing at the back of her hand like she could see through it. She knew what was inside now, bone and muscle and tendon - where, exactly, did the Triforce sit? "We can go find the others, if you want - or just go back to sickbay."

"Sickbay," he suggested. "Naomi said she'd come over later and we'd play kadis-kot."

The little girl she had seen a few days earlier, then. She nodded, a smile crossing her lips at the frankly adorable mental image. "Let's see if there's any cake left for her," she suggested, standing and offering Link her hand.

He took it, and just for a moment, she could let herself believe that things would be just fine.

 

It was a nervous princess who returned to her room, fiddling with the communicator she had been given until she worked out how to call the captain. And then she could go back to pacing, hands alternatively clenched together or fidgeting with the strands that fell in front of her ears or tugging at the uncomfortable belt on the dress she had been provided with.

Janeway was a captain. A leader. She had to have answers, answers to the questions that plagued her.

When the door finally buzzed, Zelda felt herself deflate in partial relief. "Come in," she called, hurrying to the replicator and ordering a cup of tea (sweet) and a cup of coffee (black, of course). Drinks in hand, she moved to the table, giving Janeway a shaky smile.

"However did you guess?" Janeway grinned as Zelda held the coffee out for her, taking a long sip. "Ahh. That's good. You wanted to talk to me?"

"I did," Zelda confirmed, placing her tea on the table and settling in one of the chairs. "About - well, a few things. The first is that Link and I have agreed to have the Triforce pieces removed - hopefully we'll be able to work out a better way to use them."

Janeway nodded at that, looking unsurprised. "Of course. I'll talk to the Doctor about it."

Zelda nodded, then bit down on her lip. "The second issue," she started hesitantly, "Is a little more - ah, delicate. It's..." She drew in a steadying breath, and let it out slowly. "It's about the other cyborgs. The ones that were... completed."

This time, there was no answer from the captain, just an intense look and a gesture to continue.

"Link says that he's very strong now," she forced out in a rush, "Physically strong. Which means that these - the others - they'd be even stronger, and they wouldn't have any reason to stop. They're well beyond Hyrule's capability to stop them, and they'd be a clear and present danger if any were to make it back."

Another sip, and Janeway nodded. "They're not quite as big a threat as the Borg," she agreed, "But I certainly wouldn't want any running loose. But some of these were your people - what do you have in mind?"

Zelda didn't answer immediately, staring into her cup as if the tea leaves could answer every question she had. "I tried reaching out to them telepathically," she admitted, "And... I couldn't feel anything. No, it wasn't that I couldn't feel anything, it was that I _could_ feel... nothing. I don't think there's anything left of the people they were before. They're just programs now." She drew in a breath. "I know now that bodies can function even after the - the brain dies. Link said that... well, that the Rycians were the ones who effectively killed them. But he thinks that we should finish the job - painlessly and quickly, if it's at all possible." She lifted her head to meet Janeway's gaze, pleading silently - _please, please let them die peacefully_.

"And what do you think?" Janeway urged quietly.

Exhaling, Zelda shrugged helplessly. "If it was me - if I knew I was going to be turned into one of them, I wouldn't want to hurt anyone. I'd rather die than hurt someone, which is why - which is why it's very hard for me to recommend this. But I have to think about my people, too." She let out a little laugh, shaken and humourless. "I knew that I'd have to make hard decisions one day, I just didn't expect to have to put people to death to keep others safe..."

"It's the burden of a leader," the captain told her, her own smile sad. "I've been in command of Voyager for seven years, and I've had to make some tough decisions of my own. There's no easy way around it."

"If I do this," she whispered, "It's the right thing, isn't it? The Rycians were the ones who killed them. Without the programming, they'd be properly dead already." Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she let out a sigh. "When I was back in Kakariko, I asked the villagers to compile a list of everyone that had gone missing - aside from Doroti, Alva, and Rocky. When we return, I want to hold a memorial service for them."

Janeway gave her a gentle smile, reaching across to set a hand over the princess's. "I'm sure they'd appreciate it. I'll talk to the Doctor, we'll see if we can work out the quickest and most painless method."

"Thank you," Zelda said shakily, returning the smile tentatively. "And when you do - talk to him about the Triforce pieces. I think it's time to end this."

And as Janeway took her leave, Zelda sat back, wondering how close they really were to the end.

 

A day later, they found themselves in sickbay.

Biting her lip, trying not to watch the laser scalpel slice the back of her hand open, Zelda glanced across at Link and the hand he was holding gingerly against his chest, the skin sealed back up as if it had never been broken. In front of him, in a small metal dish, was what Zelda understood to be the Triforce - a surprisingly small triangular thing made of a thin golden metal, gleaming dully under the lights of the room.

A sharp pain lanced up her arm, and Zelda winced, returning her attention to her own body - only to catch sight of an identical golden triangle being lifted free.

Her breath caught in her throat. The Triforce of Wisdom, before her startled gaze at last. Cleaning the blood off it, the Doctor set it in her outstretched palm gingerly, then fired up the dermal regenerator and healed the wound on her other hand to leave the skin flawless.

"The Triforce," Link murmured, and with the Doctor's nod, reached out to pick up the little thing before him.

And that was the point where they both lit up like miniature suns, so bright that she had to look away. There was the sensation of something having taken hold of her heart, her brain, and yanking subtly, and for a moment, things whited out.

"Z-Zelda?" Link's words were slurred, shaken and weak from beside her. "Wha's happ-happening?"

"It's activating," she told him shakily, spurred on by some knowledge that was not her own. "It's awake."

And then the entire ship shook, a muffled thump rumbling through the hull.

"Red alert," came Janeway's grim voice over the comm badges, "The Rycians are back. And this time, they're not reaching the surface!"


	7. Act Six

It was rather hard to hold a conference while the ship they were on was being fired on by enemies who wanted to strip away their lives, and yet an urgent discussion was taking place.

"We have to do something," Zelda whispered fiercely, her hand tight around her Triforce piece. "This is our home they're trying to destroy!"

"It's too dangerous!" Alva almost wailed, "They're too strong!"

Doroti winced as a shouted call across the comm badges indicated exactly how well the battle was going, shaking her head. "We can't let others be hurt."

"What _can_ we do?" Rocky pointed out shakily. "The girl is right, these are powerful enemies."

"We can use the Triforce," Link spoke up quietly, his own hand clenched tight around it, "Can't we? Zelda, can we use the Triforce?"

Zelda swallowed through a dry throat, beginning to shake her head then pausing and shrugging instead. "I don't know. I don't. I've never exactly used it before..." The ship shuddered hard enough to nearly knock her sideways, the muffled explosion audible even from sickbay, and she cringed. "But I do think we have to do _something_!"

"You won't know if you can do this unless you tried," Doroti told them both, her expression set, her metal hands folded. "If you don't, how many others will be hurt? Yes, people may still be hurt even if you do - but surely that's better than not trying at all and knowing that they'll die, isn't it?"

Biting down hard on her lip, Zelda unfurled her hand, gazing at the little golden triangle in her palm. Could they do this? Should they at least try?

"Link?" she asked uncertainly.

He nodded, still clinging to his own piece. "I didn't know what would happen when I left the forest," he said softly, "And I didn't know if I would be able to help anyone. But if I hadn't tried, the Gorons would have starved and Princess Ruto might have never come back and -" He let his breath out slowly. "We have to at least try."

She nodded slowly, her eyes damp as she slowly rose to her feet. If they tried, they could fail. But if they didn't try - then failure would be almost certain, and their fates would be left entirely in the hands of Voyager.

The lights flickered, and that was enough for her, reaching for Link's hand. Her fingers closed around metal, and although she flinched, she did not let go.

"We need to go to the bridge," she told him urgently, then turned and gave the other three a shaky smile. "Send your prayers to the Goddesses for us."

And they turned, and they ran.

Making it up to the bridge while being fired upon was not the ideal, and yet they still managed to get there intact, Link stumbling to his knees as a blast came far too close for comfort. All about them, calls ran out, orders to fire, the damage they had taken, increasingly smaller percentages for how much of their shields still remained. Dropping to her knees hard beside him, half hidden by the side of the station where Tuvok now frantically worked, she forced her frozen fingers open, revealing the piece of the Triforce within. Link did the same, the glow intensifying but muted by the sheer fire of the battle raging outside.

The two pieces began to spin, rising a few inches into the air, and then, with an audible click, locked together, corner to corner. If Zelda looked closely, she could almost see the glow where the Triforce of Power should have been, the beating of her heart quickening at the sight.

The Triforce. Even knowing of its technological nature, the sight still left her in awe.

She reached towards it, and Link did the same, the two pieces seemingly caught, suspended, between their two hands. Faster and faster it spun, golden triangles disappearing against the glow, so bright that she could see it through her eyelids.

And then all went silent, the explosions, the shouts and calls, the warning klaxons, utterly gone. Her eyes remained shut, but suddenly she could see, a web of glowing lines tracing out the world as the Triforce knew it.

And Link. She could see him too, clad in a pure white version of the clothes he wore as a hero, intact and whole and two blazingly blue eyes gazing back at her in wonder. A thread of green seemed to be woven in everywhere, curled around his arm, a thread connecting to the blazing brightness of the Triforce - and from that, another thread of blue, twisting up her own white-clad arm.

Link, whole and complete. She didn't need to speak, didn't need to listen, to know his thoughts.

As one, they turned their attention to the battle.

The Rycians had three ships, and Zelda could recognise the instantaneous stab of fear that ran through Link like a shudder. To her, they were a mess of silver wires, some thick and sturdy, others nebulous and fragile. She could see the life inside as black voids amongst the glow, blending in with technology, the organic parts muted and barely visible.

And, more importantly, she could see the inner workings of each ship. She did not need to turn to Link to know that he saw them too.

They would start with the largest. Carefully, they raised their other hand and brought it down again, and a golden cord slashed through the space between them. Soundlessly, the weapons fire lessened, their weapons severed from their ship.

And so they did it again, each time severing a weapons system, a shield generator. The engines, their propulsion, they would leave alone - they did not exactly want to encourage the Rycians to stay in Hyrule - but each move shattered their ability to fight and bring pain ever further.

Someone, they did not know which, raised their hand and brought it into a fist. No external sign indicated what happened, and yet, deep within the ships, the smaller processing units used to force people into becoming like them crumbled into dust.

The ships went into warp and disappeared far, far away, far beyond their ability to see them, and Zelda smiled.

And then the floor rose up to meet her, sound returning with a muffled roar of frantic speech, solidity returning to the world. Zelda gazed up at the ceiling for a moment, and then closed her eyes and let all fall silent once more.

 

She had to be dreaming. There was no way that Sheik could be sitting beside her in the world of white, otherwise.

"You did well, my queen," he smiled as she turned to face him, eyes wide and astonished. "You were afraid and unsure, and yet you still persevered."

"I _was_ afraid," she admitted softly, "But I had to do this... could you see it, from where ever you were?"

There was a soft, sad chuckle, a gentle hand resting on her back. "Zelda..." he sighed, shaking his head. "You know this is a dream. You wanted to see me, for me to reassure you, and so your unconscious brought me here." Her shoulders slumped, but his hand did not move. "But you also know that should I have actually been here, I would be so proud of you. You've grown from a timid child into a wonderful young woman, and now it's time to start thinking of yourself as the Queen of Hyrule."

Zelda let out a short laugh. "My unconscious seems to think quite highly of herself."

"Don't you deserve it? Everyone deserves to see themselves with new eyes every now and then."

With a shaky smile, Zelda turned to the phantom and embraced him hard, her cheek resting against Sheik's. "Thank you," she whispered, and closed her eyes. "I miss you, Sheik."

"I miss you too." And unconscious or not, she knew that he did, that he would have, had he still been conscious where ever he was now. He had told her as much before the Temple of Time, hadn't he?"

There was the gentle press of lips against her hair, and a voice she knew better than her own murmuring, "But there are others who need you more," and the world of white faded into something more mundane - the beeping of machinery, the murmur of voices.

Zelda's eyes opened, the ceiling of sickbay swimming into view, and she blinked.

"Ah, the lady of the hour is awake!" the Doctor announced, running a little handheld device (a medical scanner, she recalled vaguely) over her. "How are you feeling?"

She blinked muzzily. "Like I just jumped off Death Mountain."

"What a cheerful name," he said dryly, turning his attention away to another bed, this one holding Link. "I'm sure it's a dazzling destination."

There was a faint hiss from the hypospray, and Link stirred, letting out a dazed mutter before seeking her out. "Zelda?"

"Hi," she smiled, equally groggy, before turning to the Doctor. "What happened?"

He placed the hypospray down, then turned to her, hands on his hips. "Well, _somehow_ , _someone_ \- or should that be some _ones_? - managed to sneak out of sickbay and give themselves neurolytic shock while single-handedly taking down three Rycian warships." Shaking his head in mock disgust, he ran the same scanner over Link's body, nodding to himself as he glanced at the medical tricorder. "And how do you feel?"

Link blinked slowly, shaking his head. "Death Mountain sounds about right," he croaked, shifting his good shoulder. "Will we be okay?"

"Of course. You can thank me for it later. No rush, of course."

Zelda hid a chuckle, glancing across at Link. "How long were we out? Is everyone okay?"

"Two hours and thirteen minutes," he explained, reaching for a couple more hyposprays and injecting them with the contents. Almost immediately, Zelda felt some of the fuzziness lift. "The ship is fine, so is everyone on the planet, and the Rycians are long gone. And before you ask, those Triforce pieces are in _separate_ containers."

The chuckle turned into a little laugh, sheer relief making her giddy, overwhelmed and dizzy with it. They had won! They had used the Triforce and chased their enemies away, and in the process, they had saved Hyrule!

And for the first time in a long, long time, finally free of worry and doubt for the first time since she was nine years old, Zelda felt a genuine smile cross her face.

Finally, they were free.

 

Freedom, Zelda was discovering, was time-consuming.

In the aftermath of the Rycian attack and their successful defeat of them, she had suddenly found a near endless list to face. There were the new prosthetics that Link and the three Kakarikans were to receive, something more like humanity than mechanics. There were provisions to find for the land below them, a trade agreement between Hyrule and Voyager, preparations to make for the coming winter.

And, the morning after the attack on the ship, something rather more unpleasant to face.

"Ready?" Link murmured, holding on to Zelda's hand as they made their way down to the cargo bay. "I'll be here, okay?"

Zelda nodded distractedly, her eyes on the captain's back as she followed Janeway into the cargo bay, the Doctor keeping pace behind them. They had found a way, he had explained, some sort of chemical agent that would render them asleep, then unconscious, then...

But it would be painless, and it would be peaceful.

"I'm sorry," she told them brokenly as she stood before them, unseeing eyes gazing back at her. "You deserved a lot better."

And she bowed her head, clinging to Link's hand, and she prayed.

 

From there, things steadily improved. Spending some time in consultation with Janeway, she learnt that Death Mountain had a large amount of something called dilithium. With Zelda mediating, the two (with Tuvok in tow) beamed down directly to the mountain, meeting with their new patriarch now that Darunia had become a Sage. Amoto was a stout young man who stood with confidence, peering down at Zelda and Janeway curiously.

So long as Voyager also removed a goodly amount of the best-quality ores in the mountain for them to eat, he gave them their blessing to extract whatever dilithium they needed, enough in exchange to provide both the Gorons and the Hylians with what they needed.

Wood and stone and metal, tools for working any and all materials, fabrics and textiles for clothing and bed linen, a large quantity of food enough for the winter... Ganondorf's collected stores had depleted the fields and had been destroyed with the castle, and this would ensure that they would stave off starvation until the next harvest.

And, at Zelda's request, they would have one more prize - a veritable stack of PADDs and a power source, enough to keep her studying science, technology, and the history of the United Federation of Planets well into her old age.

If they were to be a part of the Delta quadrant, part of the greater galaxy, then they would need to be prepared. Indeed, had there not been the minor issue of ruling Hyrule at hand, Zelda would have been greatly tempted to leave with Voyager, travel to Earth, and join Starfleet herself.

Or would she have been? There was, after all, more than just duty binding her to Hyrule.

Which was why she now found herself in sickbay, waiting for four of her people to awaken.

Doroti had been content with her new hands, and was already happily making plans of new things to paint. Alva had given the first genuine smile she had given for the entirety of their stay on Voyager, when she had learnt exactly what she'd be seeing in the mirror again. Rocky had gently turned down the offer of a new leg, telling the Doctor that if he was going to have a piece of metal dangling from his hip, then he would be making it himself (synthetic skin or not).

And Link... Link would have full mobility, full vision, the reflection in the mirror his own (save for his ear, and that, he explained, was an injury anyone could have).

They would have bones that were lightweight and strong. Muscles that contracted and flexed. Joints that moved naturally. A synthetic skin that felt almost warm to the touch. Certainly, not all of their organs could be regrown, but some certainly could be, reducing the appallingly high risk of failure at some point in the future.

They would have their lives back.

"Ready?" the Doctor murmured, and he pressed the hypospray against Link's neck.

Two blue eyes blinked open groggily. A smooth jawline shifted as he yawned, blonde bangs falling before him. And Link slowly pushed himself upright, raising a hand to his chest in wonder, and feeling only real and synthetic skin.

Zelda gazed at him for a moment, flushing faintly when she realised that Link was practically naked in front of her, but smiling through the embarrassment. "Welcome back," she whispered, and when Link beckoned for her to come over, she did not pull away from the hug.

They weren't fully restored, the Doctor warned them later on, all four awake and dressed. They would have to adjust to being just a little heavier, slightly off balance until they learnt to compensate. Their synthetic skin had some stretch, but not enough - weight gain or loss would be distinctly lopsided. Changes in complexion would be potentially visible, and the seams where synthetic flesh met real would be far more visible with any differences like that. Their new skin would not heal if damaged (although he assured them confidently that it was also far stronger than natural skin), it would remain hairless and smooth, it would not be quite as warm as their biological parts. And there was the distinct possibility of aching in cold or damp weather - not a guarantee, but a potential problem.

But on the whole, it was quite the improvement. Zelda caught Link gazing at his hands later, flexing the fingers, and smiled as she set the ocarina in his palm.

"I think you can play this now," she told him, settling beside him.

He gazed at it for a moment, then raised it to his lips and played her lullaby. And at that moment, all was right once again.

 

It was beautiful, from above.

Gazing down at Hyrule, at their world, from the windows of Voyager's mess hall, Zelda let a smile settle on her face. It truly was her home, wasn't it? The place she had been born, the place she had been raised, the place she would help to lead out of the darkness.

And yet the view was not of Hyrule alone. Beyond it, past the fragile skin of atmosphere that coated their world, there were stars. And amongst those stars, civilisations bloomed.

How could they go back to tiny little Hyrule now, knowing what they knew now? Janeway and her crew had come from the other side of the galaxy. Surely it was time to learn more about their world at large?

"Are you ready?" Janeway murmured from behind Zelda.

Starting a little, Zelda shrugged, fidgeting with one glove almost nervously. "I think so," she ventured, "But the last time I talked to people, it didn't really go well... what do I tell them?"

"The truth is always a good start," the captain said with a smile. "Explain to them that they're part of a wider world now, and even though there's bad out there... there's also a hell of a lot of good."

Zelda smiled despite herself. "It may be several lifetimes before we begin to explore space ourselves."

Janeway grinned. "The universe isn't going anywhere. We hope."

That was less than reassuring, and the look she gave the captain said as much.

Still, Zelda felt, overall, somewhat better. There was a multitude of things to explore out there. For too long, Hyrule had been stagnant, its technology never really going anywhere, exploration stalling at mountain and desert.

Now, knowing what laid beyond... Zelda wondered vaguely how much a queen could get away with exploring, and vowed to hire the best cartographers in the land. They would be needing new maps...

By the time that the goodbyes were said, she was ready to go home.

This time, they would be beaming directly to the village. Tuvok would land first, and once his signal rang up, huge shipments of materials, textiles, food, and Zelda's new collection of PADDs would arrive (along with a few gifts - Naomi had requested a kadis-kot board for Link, the Doctor had shared a set of paints with Doroti, and Zelda herself was to receive a game Tuvok called kal-toh, one he promised Zelda that she would pick up quickly).

And once those supplies had been delivered, all that was left was to transport down themselves.

Five Hylians and one human (Janeway had insisted on seeing them off) set foot on Kakariko's village green, and Zelda breathed in deeply. There was rain approaching, a summer storm, a cleansing that Hyrule sorely needed, and with the help of a few local men, the food, textiles, and more sensitive equipment were hastily moved to the nearby inn.

"Captain?" Zelda asked uncertainly.

"Knock 'em dead, kid," Janeway said with a reassuring grin, squeezing her shoulder once. "Good luck."

"I hope you get home soon," she murmured back, stepping back as she tapped her comm badge and disappeared once more.

They were alone. And they were home.

 

"What do you think will become of them?"

Pausing at the replicator to order her coffee, Kathryn Janeway crossed over to her window and gazed down, a faint smile on her face. "I half expect their application to join the Federation within a decade," she shrugged, taking a sip.

"She's still very young," Chakotay pointed out, following her gaze.

Kathryn nodded once, pursing her lips. "She's grown up just in the past few days. I think they're going to be okay. That girl has a good head on her shoulders. It'll be an adventure."

Chakotay smiled a little, turning away from the window. "Well, we have our own adventure to get back to. Shall we?"

Nodding again, Kathryn tapped her comm badge, requesting that they go to warp as soon as they were ready. And then, with a familiar hum, Voyager spend up, star trails left in their wake.

 

The one benefit of long skirts, Zelda decided, was that no one could see her trembling legs as she started slowly up the stairs, followed by Link and the other three. At the top of the ledge, she gazed down at the assembling crowd, Link and Doroti on one side, Alva and Rocky on the other, Hyruleans, cyborgs, those who had seen the stars, destined heroes, royalty, and the fabric of humanity all.

"My friends," she started, her voice quavering only a touch, "I know I have been remiss in my duty to you these past few years, and especially these past few days..."

And she spoke to them. She told them of the events of seven years, how she had been hidden away even as her heart cried for them. She told them of Link, of his heroics, of the final battle. She told them of the Rycian attack, and of Voyager.

She told them that there were worlds out there, worlds beyond counting and beyond imagination, and that they would need to venture just a little further to begin to see them for themselves. She told them that, once, their saviours had been like them, and that reaching for the sky was a true and distinct possibility.

And she told them that she would spend her entire life ensuring that they would get just there.

"In these past days," she told them, her voice no longer trembling but bold and clear, "I have seen things I could have never dreamt of. But these things do not need to be inaccessible! We will explore the furthest frontiers of our world, vast and beautiful, and then we will find new frontiers. We will find the stars. It will be our newest and greatest mission - to explore these strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations... to boldly go where no one has gone before!"


End file.
